DNA Payments

Automated payments drive scalable success

DNA Payments is a fintech providing end-to-end online and in-store payment solutions for businesses of all sizes. Its customers range from small cafes and corner shops through to major high street retailers, hotels and restaurants.

“We’re all about using the latest technology to simplify payments for merchants,” said Jan-Pieter Lips, CEO, DNA Payments. “We help customers to streamline their business while providing great experiences to their own customers.”

Like any start-up, cash is the lifeblood of growth for DNA Payments so it’s important for the company to have strong revenue-to-cash performance. And that cash needs to be collected as efficiently as possible in order to keep costs under control.

“As a high growth business, scalability is always top of mind,” said Jan-Pieter. “We couldn’t scale if we didn’t automate processes like collections, and that's where GoCardless comes in – automated Direct Debit is efficient and the security of income allows us to grow.”

Digitisation and consolidation to the rescue

Following a comprehensive digitisation and consolidation of its finance systems, DNA now uses Direct Debit from GoCardless to automatically schedule and collect customers’ monthly payments for its services and products.

“Our previous processes were very manual, a situation that was exacerbated by a series of acquisitions that meant we had different CRM, billing and collection systems in play, and various spreadsheets,” said Garreth Dorree, COO, DNA Payments. “Sending an invoice and waiting for a customer to pay – or chasing them if they forgot – was neither efficient nor scalable. Billing and collections were difficult to stay on top of and revenue-to-cash was lagging as a result.”

DNA decided to consolidate everything onto the best of the best from the solutions currently in place, and that meant GoCardless for collections.

“GoCardless has been a big factor in our ability to move forward in a much more digital and streamlined way,” added Garreth. “Because it works seamlessly with all the other solutions in our financial suite, mainly Kolleno and Netsuite, billing and collections are now simpler and more reliable for both customers and staff.”

More cash in the bank

The digitisation and consolidation project has seen DNA payments catapult its revenue-to-cash performance into a different class.

“Revenue-to-cash is now 95%-plus thanks to GoCardless and our wider digitisation project, compared to around 70-80% previously,” said Garreth. “That means we have more cash in the bank to be utilised across the business. And we can put more resources into sales and service because we're spending less time and money on collections.”

DNA now bills thousands of customers every month with GoCardless, and that number is growing all the time.

“We bill 40-50% of our current customers through Direct Debit, but that's an ever-growing percentage because up to 70% of the 500 new customers we recruit a month pay by Direct Debit,” said Garreth.

£350k staff costs avoided

DNA might be scoring hundreds of customers every month, but it hasn’t needed to add a single person to its collection team since adopting GoCardless. This has helped it to avoid hundreds of thousands of pounds in extra costs.

“The customers we bill through GoCardless has grown from 2,500 to more than 10,000 in a year, and our collections team hasn’t grown at all,” said Garreth.

This success is largely down to the seamless way GoCardless integrates with DNA’s systems. “GoCardless is an API-led environment meaning that, end-to-end, from invoicing to reconciliation, there’s no manual intervention,” added Garreth.

Enhanced customer communications

DNA’s Digital Marketing Manager, Chloe Mayley, says unifying collections into a single platform has made communicating with customers much easier too.

“GoCardless allows us to be cohesive in the way we talk to customers,” she said. “Instead of communicating with them about Direct Debit across five platforms, it now takes just two, freeing up our team to focus on more customer-first, value add activities.”

A winning team

DNA also benefits from access to a dedicated GoCardless Customer Success Manager whose job is to help it get the most from the solution and provide insights into payment best practices. A sense of real partnership has developed between the two companies as a result.

“I couldn’t be prouder of the relationship we have with GoCardless,” said Garreth. “We’ve seamlessly moved most of our entities to GoCardless because there’s a really strong working relationship between both parties. That’s down to the transparency and honesty we get from our CSM, who also keeps us looking ahead at how we can be even more successful.”

More to come

Growth and innovation are always on the agenda at DNA, and Garreth expects GoCardless to continue to be a key partner as it fine-tunes its processes and explores new payment methods.

“As a fintech itself, GoCardless understands how scalability and growth go hand in hand,” he said. “We’ve really benefitted from that, and I'm sure there's going to be more opportunities for us both to get better, together, and explore new payment methods like open banking. We’re delighted with the impact of GoCardless so far and excited at what’s to come.”