Direct debits are a great way to take control over your businesses income and avoid the stress, time and effort of chasing customers to pay your invoices. All you do is agree terms with your customers to say you will take the direct debit from their ## days from invoice date and then you are in complete control. As long as you remember to request the payment from your customer, you will end up with nearly all of your invoices getting paid in full on time, every time.
Having a direct debit facility also takes your business to another level on the credibility scale, as often people associate direct debit payments with large organisations. If you are one of those people who think that taking payments from your customers by direct debit is just for big companies, with big turnovers and deep pockets then think again. GoCardless now make accepting direct debit payments accessible for anyone, and they make the whole process super easy.
GoCardless started up in 2011 and in a short space of time quickly turned into one of Europe’s leading Direct Debit providers, processing over half a billion pounds a year for over ten thousand businesses. The great thing about GoCardless is that they work with all types of business from one man bands to large corporations.
It is simple and free to create an account, and for small business with less than 500 payments a month there are no fixed fees for the service. The only fee you pay is 1% of any transaction and that is capped at £2 and when you compare to PayPal’s Standard transaction fee it also works out much cheaper.
While direct debit may not be suitable for all businesses, it certainly is an opportunity not to be missed for any small business that takes regular payments from their clients.
