Getting Payments - Direct Debit

[Ali123]

Hi all,

Need some advice as my bank isn't helping much on this.

I would like to arrange to collect direct debit payments from our customers. Ideally like to manage this inhouse without the use of another provider.

Our bank advised this isn't available.

If its not available how can other firms offer to do this themselves for a fee on our behalf, but we cant do it ourselves.

Are there only certain banks that can offer this?

Thanks

Ali

 

[james_firmsites]

In order to do it you normally need to pay the bank for a direct debit "licence". We were quoted about £5k to set this up several years ago (It may well have changed now) plus a fee of £5 per customer we added to a DD.

Needless to say that was crazy money, so instead we opted to use Gocardless. They charge a simple flat 1% and no monthly fees. Our customers love it, and it plays nicely with our accounts system Xero.

 

[JulieFS]

Have a look at Go Cardless, it's a direct debit facilty kind of like Paypal but cheaper.

We use this and about 70% of our customer base have signed up so we can take their payments. It works very well and regular subscriptions can be set up for regular clients. It costs you 1% of the payments processed which is automatically deducted during the process.

It's very easy to use and a lot in my industry use this facility to take client's payments.

 

[jf-financial]

Another fan of GoCardless here - very simple to use - both from your end and the clients end when it comes to setting up a DD

 

[Nochexman]

Our bank advised this isn't available.

What do you sell?

 

[The Online Accountants]

We also recommend Gocardless / Directli. We use it ourselves and have never had any issues with it.

 

[jeanpierre121]

Hey Ali, did you solve this? I also recommend gocardless. We used it at my previous company

 

[Raw Rob]

Another recommendation for Gocardless. Not only is the fee 1% as mentioned above, it is capped at £1 per transaction.