Rebel Energy

Automated payments sharpen Rebel Energy’s edge

Rebel Energy is the UK’s challenger energy supplier providing clean energy at a fair price.

It’s growing fast, increasing its customer base by 50% month-on-month for six months straight, and expecting its customer base to swell to 150,000 by the end of 2024. To keep growth high, costs down, and prices low, Rebel Energy is relentlessly dedicated to using automation and data-driven processes in pursuit of operational excellence.

That’s why it gets paid with GoCardless.

Advanced tech and shared values

Dan Bates, Rebel Energy’s founder and CEO, was drawn to GoCardless as a partner that both shared his values and could meet his payment needs. “I saw an organisation that had advanced technology and was dedicated to continual improvement, while being transparent, open and fair,” he said.

Two years on, the reliability of Direct Debit and the automation of the GoCardless platform underpin Rebel Energy’s rock-solid cash flow. Its customers benefit from a familiar payments experience.

“99% of our customers pay by GoCardless,” said Mark Neveu, Chief Commercial Officer at Rebel Energy.

An extra £45K to invest in growth

Efficiency without compromising on service is the secret to Rebel Energy’s competitive edge, and GoCardless has been key to keeping costs manageable during the company’s rapid growth. Lower staffing costs in particular have been a major source of savings.

“GoCardless has shown that the complicated process of setting up Direct Debit can actually be made very simple, taking a lot of headaches away from customers,” said Mark. “From our side, we also don’t need to have staff dedicated to payments, because GoCardless takes on the brunt of the work. It integrates with our ESG CRM and billing platform to enable straight-through processing, so as soon as a customer gets registered, a Direct Debit mandate is set up.”

50% reduction in failed payments 

Rebel Energy also depends on GoCardless for customer debt management, another important route to cost reductions.

“GoCardless notifies us as soon as payments fail so we can reach out to customers and minimise the risk of debt piling up, which only harms customers and our bottom line,” said Dan.

Rebel Energy also uses Success+ from GoCardless, which leverages payment intelligence data and machine learning to automatically retry payments when they’re most likely to succeed. This further maximises collections and ensures that only high-need customers are passed to the Rebel Energy team for direct help.

“With Success+ our payment failure rate is forecast to drop from 6% to around 3% so it will more than pay for itself,” said Mark. “We'll end next year with around 150,000 customers, so those savings will scale substantially.”

Open Banking cuts out the middlemen

Rebel Energy also plans to collect customers’ initial payments using Instant Bank Pay from GoCardless, an Open Banking-powered solution for one-off payments. This would potentially save them the usual two-week wait for a Direct Debit to be set up.

“What really excites me about Open Banking is the cost saving and automation possibilities,” said Dan. “Instant Bank Pay will allow customers to pay us instantly, directly from their bank account. That means no card providers or other intermediaries taking a cut and delaying the funds hitting our account. It also means that we can minimise the number of vendors we work with.”

Calm among the chaos

Mark says he’s always felt valued by GoCardless even if Rebel Energy might not be one of its biggest customers: “GoCardless have some massive clients but they’ve never made us feel small and we get all the attention we need, when we need it.”

“Our Customer Success Manager is great and it makes a big difference to have a human at the end of the phone ready to discuss challenges and opportunities,” he continued. “It’s a strategic partnership, illustrated by the way we’re currently brainstorming ways to squash down failed payments even further.”

Mark also says that although it can be tough – and hectic – getting a start-up off the ground, he’s grateful for the headspace afforded by dependable partners like GoCardless: “Working in a start-up in the energy industry can be chaos. GoCardless brings us peace of mind and calmness, knowing we can trust them to deliver. Long may that continue.”