Yonder

Variable Recurring Payments revolutionise credit card repayments

Yonder is a next-generation, app-based lifestyle credit card. Its mission is to make credit empowering for the next generation – and to offer rewards people actually want to use. Earlier this year, Yonder secured £62.5m in Series A funding, boosting its market valuation nearly three times to £70m. 

“With Yonder, money is more than just a way for you to pay,” said Tim Chong, Co-founder and CEO, Yonder. “Our customers earn points on every purchase, which they can spend on specially curated experiences that are updated every month.”

Reliable customer repayments are not, in Tim’s words, super “sexy” – but they are super important to a credit card company and its customers. And Direct Debit is the gold standard, according to Tim.

“Payments are like plumbing; when they don’t work you really notice it,” he said. “If customers don’t trust that a payment will clear, they’ll also be worried about going overdue or paying higher interest rates. And as a business we need balances to clear so customers can keep using their card.”

Maximum payments flexibility

Yonder relies on GoCardless to handle all of its customer repayments. It is the foundation of a flexible payments flow that allows customers to pay bills whenever they want “GoCardless was very clearly one of the best technology-oriented, API-first Direct Debit companies we found,” said Tim. “It allows us to abstract away a lot of complexity in the backend, while offering customers the ability to pay weekly, fortnightly, or monthly.”

Yonder is also working with GoCardless to allow customers to use Variable Recurring Payments (VRPs), thanks to Instant Bank Pay, to instantly pay off their credit card balance. The arrangement means that Yonder can access both Direct Debit and instant, recurring open banking payments through a single provider.

“We’ve used GoCardless for Direct Debit for over a year and given their expertise in bank payments, it made sense to add VRPs and offer the two together,” said Tim.

“In these economic conditions, consumers want more control over their finances. VRPs are the perfect solution. Since we’ve introduced them, we’ve seen many members move from monthly to weekly or even daily repayments. The instant nature of VRPs means they can immediately free up their credit line and take full advantage of our rewards, or gain peace of mind that their balance is cleared. Simply put, VRPs allow our members to manage their repayments in the way that works for them.”

Instant payments boost cashflow

Instant repayments with VRPs mean customers’ Yonder balances are always up to date, so they always know how much credit they have available. They also boost Yonder’s cashflow.

“Variable Recurring Payments mean we get cash quicker,” added Tim. “When you're dealing with millions of pounds, getting paid a couple of days early unlocks meaningful capital that we can keep on our balance sheet instead of out there in the ether.”

Award-winning design, with help from the GoCardless API

The flexibility of the GoCardless API has enabled Yonder to build a better product, including custom payment pages and a fully customised VRP flow. This work paid off when Yonder was awarded Best UX of the Year at the AltFi awards.

“It’s exciting that the GoCardless API designs aren't set in stone for us,” said Tim. “We have a chance to shape how they are designed. We’re not just a consumer of the endpoints – we can shape and create them with the GoCardless team.”

In this way, GoCardless has become an extension of Yonder’s team. There’s even a Slack channel connecting the two, enabling close collaboration and accelerated innovation.

Pushing Open Banking forward

Yonder is excited to partner with GoCardless to drive Open Banking innovations, for both its own customers and the market as a whole.

“Low consumer awareness of the benefits of Open Banking and how to use it is one of the main barriers currently preventing the technology from reaching its full potential,” concluded Tim.

“Working with GoCardless puts us at the front of the Open Banking revolution, meaning we can be first to market with the very best customer experiences. We’re excited to be pushing payments forward and playing our part in bringing Open Banking to the masses.”