The archive · Money & Fintech · Strategic decision · 2019–2026
GoCardless bets UK VRP mandate makes bank payments default: £160.9M FY25, Mollie deal
GoCardless bet the UK's VRP open-banking mandate would make bank payments a default; FY25 revenue £160.9M, Mollie acquisition agreed 2025
GoCardless
What the business is
London bank-payment company: collects recurring and one-off payments for 100,000+ businesses via direct debit, open banking (Instant Bank Pay / VRP) and real-time rails across 30+ countries.
How it started
Founded in London in 2011 by Hiroki Takeuchi, Tom Blomfield and Matt Robinson to fix recurring payments for SMEs with direct debit. From 2019 GoCardless placed an explicit bet on VRP: it took the first live transaction through a sandbox built by the OBIE and, as UK regulators pushed the nine largest banks to build VRP for sweeping, launched Instant Bank Pay so merchants could collect one-off and variable recurring payments through open banking.
What happened
Dec 2023: rewards-card fintech Yonder went live paying credit-card balances via Instant Bank Pay. Jan 2024: JustGiving made GoCardless its exclusive Open Banking payment provider, replacing American Express for one-off giving. Sep 2024: the CMA confirmed all nine mandated banks had completed the Open Banking Roadmap, including VRP for sweeping. FY25 (year to Jun 2025): group turnover £160.9M, up 22%; payment volume £79.2bn, doubled partly by the Sep 2024 Nuapay acquisition; first EBITDA-positive quarter on an adjusted basis. Dec 2025: Octopus Energy moved 5.5M accounts and £12bn of payments to GoCardless in one of the UK's largest direct-debit migrations.
How it ended up
Still running and being acquired: in Dec 2025 GoCardless agreed to be acquired by Mollie, and in 2026 it plans to launch commercial VRP — branded Recurring Pay by Bank — claiming 100% payer coverage from day one and 99.5% uptime.
Background
GoCardless is a London bank-payment company that collects recurring and one-off payments for more than 100,000 businesses. Its bet, visible since 2019, was that open banking's variable recurring payments (VRPs) would become a default payment rail — more flexible than direct debit, cheaper than cards — and that GoCardless, already the direct-debit layer, would be the natural enabler.
The regulatory opening arrived in stages. The CMA's Retail Banking Market Investigation Order required the nine largest UK banking providers to build open banking, including VRP for sweeping; in September 2024 the CMA confirmed the final banks (Danske, Bank of Ireland, Allied Irish Bank) had completed the Roadmap. GoCardless had been laying track the whole time: it took the first VRP transaction through an OBIE sandbox in 2019, ran a commercial VRP pilot with NatWest, launched VRP as Instant Bank Pay, and signed Yonder (Dec 2023) and JustGiving (Jan 2024) as live customers.
The bet has held up financially. In FY25 (year to June 2025) group revenue rose 22% to £160.9M, payment volume reached £79.2bn, and the company posted its first EBITDA-positive quarter on an adjusted basis. In December 2025 GoCardless agreed to be acquired by Mollie, and it plans to launch commercial VRP in 2026, positioning itself inside the UK's next open-banking phase.
What has to be true
- GoCardless treated the regulator as a co-builder: it executed VRP transactions before the mandate finished, so it was ready when the CMA9 opened the rail.
- It married the new rail to an existing one — Instant Bank Pay with direct-debit fallback — which de-risked early customers whose banks did not support VRP.
- Reference customers (Yonder, JustGiving, later Octopus Energy's £12bn migration) gave the product credibility that a standalone VRP startup lacked.
- Volume economics compounded: £79.2bn of FY25 payment volume and 100,000+ merchants gave it pricing power and an acquisition case for Mollie.
What can be applied
Regulatory mandates create rails, not winners: GoCardless won the VRP moment because it had spent a decade as the direct-debit layer — when the CMA opened the rail, it could package it instantly.
Aftermath
As of September 2026, GoCardless is still operating independently while the Mollie acquisition closes. It reports 100,000+ businesses, US$130bn+ in annual payment volume across 30+ countries, and its first adjusted EBITDA-positive quarter in FY25, with a first adjusted EBITDA-positive year expected in FY26. Later in 2026 it plans to launch commercial VRP (Recurring Pay by Bank) with 100% payer coverage and 99.5% uptime.
Sources
- CMA confirms full completion of Open Banking Roadmap
- Open Banking Roadmap now fully complete, CMA says
- Yonder goes live with GoCardless for Variable Recurring Payments
- GoCardless grows 22% in FY25 as fintech records first quarter of profitability
- GoCardless enters unicorn club with $312 million funding and $2.1 billion valuation
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