Can GoCardless Disrupt Visa, Mastercard’s £1.5 Billion Payments Empire?
British payments giant GoCardless has fired its most ambitious shot yet at the UK’s deeply entrenched card payment establishment, unveiling its Recurring Pay by Bank solution at the opening of Money20/20 Europe. The launch comes alongside GoCardless joining a growing coalition of banks, building societies, and fintechs to formally back the live rollout of the UK Payments Initiative (UKPI), an industry-led scheme designed to modernise the country’s payments infrastructure from the ground up.
The stakes could not be higher. Card payments currently account for 84 per cent of all UK retail spending by turnover, and that reliance is costing British merchants an estimated £1.5 billion in annual transaction fees, money flowing almost exclusively to Visa and Mastercard. GoCardless’s Recurring Pay by Bank is built to change that equation by enabling automated, flexible, account-to-account (A2A) transactions that bypass card rails entirely, cutting costs while delivering instant authorization and bank-grade security. It is a direct response to the government’s National Payment Vision (NPV), which explicitly calls for greater domestic competition and payment resilience.
The commercial appetite for this shift is already there. Research conducted by independent insights agency Opinium found that 89 per cent of recurring revenue businesses believe Recurring Pay by Bank technology will meaningfully improve their cash flow, while 91 per cent of corporate decision-makers expect it to reduce payment processing costs significantly. Nearly half of surveyed businesses said they plan to be early adopters. Perhaps more telling for the long term, 60 per cent of Gen Z shoppers say they are open to using recurring bank-payment methods, a figure nearly double the general consumer average of 38 per cent.
GoCardless has not simply flipped a switch. The company completed its first live Recurring Pay by Bank transaction earlier this year, processing a real-world payment on behalf of energy supplier Jellyfish Energy, using that milestone to refine three key reliability features built into its platform. An intelligent routing system automatically redirects payers to traditional Direct Debit rails if a bank’s open banking API goes offline, ensuring coverage is never interrupted. A “Bank Guess” feature, powered by 15 years of transactional data, spanning interactions with 80 per cent of all UK payers, auto-fills checkout credentials to reduce friction at the point of payment. Enterprise-grade uptime configurations round out the offering, addressing a concern that has historically slowed open banking adoption among large organisations.
Shaun Puckrin, chief product officer at GoCardless, described the launch as a watershed moment, noting that the UK has long needed a genuine rival to traditional card payments. He said Recurring Pay by Bank now creates real competition in a market that has been expensive and dominated for decades, adding that the technology could eventually form the foundation of agentic commerce, where artificial intelligence, automated systems, and instant payments operate in concert.
Richard Koch, managing director at UKPI, pointed to GoCardless’s depth of experience, managing over $130 billion in annual transaction volume across 30 countries, as critical to building consumer trust in open banking as an everyday payment method rather than a regulatory concept.
With the UKPI architecture now live, Recurring Pay by Bank is cleared for immediate deployment across utilities, public sector bodies, financial services firms, and charitable organisations. The battle for the future of UK payments has officially begun, and for the first time in a long time, Visa and Mastercard are looking over their shoulders.
