GoCardless launches Instant Bank Pay and Verified Mandates in Germany

By Joy Dumasia

GoCardless, a FinTech in direct bank payment solutions, has launched two open banking features in Germany by introducing Instant Bank Pay and Verified Mandates.  

Alexandra Chiaramonti, General Manager of Continental Europe at GoCardless, said: “Open banking is growing rapidly, with 64m active users projected in Europe by 2024. With the launch of Instant Bank Pay and Verified Mandates, we’re enabling German merchants to get ahead of the curve. We’re excited to offer this new technology to help them tackle a range of challenges, from high card fees to payment fraud, while at the same time offering consumers a preferred, more secure, and seamless way to pay.”

Instant Bank Pay allows merchants to take instant, one-off account-to-account payments from new and existing customers while reaping the benefits of bank debit for recurring payments. The open banking feature represents a new breed of instant payments in Germany and addresses an issue that is particularly acute for recurring revenue businesses: according to research from GoCardless, 88% of merchants in Germany with this model need to collect additional one-off payments. Although bank debit is preferred in Germany, with consumers citing it as their top way to pay for subscriptions, household bills and instalments, it is not suitable for one-off payments because it doesn’t provide instant visibility of payment authorisation. 

Merchants can build the Instant Bank Pay feature into their checkout flow or send a payment request with a link to pay. Similar to a mobile wallet payment, payers are seamlessly connected to their bank and can authorise payment directly from their bank account in just a few clicks. 

Verified Mandates uses open banking to automatically and instantly verify customer information as part of the flow of setting up a new direct debit mandate, thereby reducing payment fraud. This risk is common, particularly amongst B2C companies processing many transactions. With Verified Mandates, GoCardless offers merchants a simple way to stop fraud before it happens without compromising the customer journey.  

IBS Intelligence reported that Nude, the savings app for first-time buyers, has selected GoCardless, a global leader in direct bank payments, to power the payments for their users to save and invest for their first home deposit.