gocardless-to-acquire-open-banking-platform-nordigen,-combining-broad-open-banking-connectivity-with-bank-payment-expertise

GoCardless to acquire open banking platform Nordigen, combining broad open banking connectivity with bank payment expertise

 

GoCardless, the global leader in direct bank payments, has announced its plans to acquire Nordigen, the freemium open banking data provider, as it builds on its vision to become the world’s bank payment network. GoCardless will incorporate Nordigen’s next-generation open banking connectivity — offering the widest coverage in Europe, connecting to more than 2,300 banks in 31 countries — into its account-to-account network.

The acquisition means the fintech will now provide free open banking connectivity at scale, opening up self-serve access to account information services (AIS) to everyone. In addition, its suite of premium data products help improve outcomes across a range of use cases from credit assessments to customer engagement.

The announcement is the latest move from GoCardless as it accelerates its open banking strategy. Over the past 18 months it has launched its open banking-enabled Instant Bank Pay feature across multiple markets, as well as Verified Mandates, which combines AIS with direct debit to prevent fraud. This deal will enable GoCardless to acquire in-house open banking connectivity, which it plans to build on in the near future by expanding coverage and adding new payment types such as Variable Recurring Payments.

Hiroki Takeuchi, Co-founder and CEO of GoCardless, said: “Over the past few years it’s been amazing to watch open banking grow from a trend on the horizon to a global phenomenon which has given rise to a market worth over $400 billion. We realised early on that this technology would drive bank payments for decades to come and over the last 18 months, we’ve accelerated our push into open banking as part of our vision to build the world’s bank payment network.

The Nordigen acquisition will take us to the next level. By intelligently combining free, state-of-the-art open banking connectivity with deep payment expertise, we can now offer open banking-as-a-service to any developer, partner or fintech. We believe this open access will lead to experimentation, and that will create even more compelling use cases. We’re excited to redefine what open banking can do with the talented Nordigen team now on board.”

Rolands Mesters, CEO Of Nordigen, said: “At Nordigen, our mission is to help businesses around the world adopt and utilise open banking, enabling greater financial transparency and financial inclusion. We share GoCardless’s excitement about the growth of open banking, and we’re delighted to join forces with a group of people who not only share our passion for driving game-changing innovation in financial services, but will also help us bring free open banking access to a far wider audience.”

This deal was signed on 30th June 2022 and is expected to close later in the summer. Further terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

uk-fintech-gocardless-raises-$95m-funding

UK fintech GoCardless raises $95m funding

 

GoCardless, a fintech leader in recurring payments supporting more than 55,000 businesses worldwide, today announces it has raised $95m in a Series F funding round.

This latest fundraise, led by Bain Capital Ventures, follows 46% year-on-year growth for GoCardless despite the challenging economic environment and supports its ambitious growth plans. It brings the total raised to-date to $240m.

GoCardless will use the funding to accelerate its open banking strategy, combining the latest technology with its global bank debit network. For the first time, merchants will be able to access the best of both worlds for recurring payments: Instant open banking payments will provide visibility and speed, while bank debit maximises cash flow and minimises churn by pulling funds automatically from payers – all at a lower cost than cards.

GoCardless will also expand its offering into the adjacent e-commerce market to launch a simple and secure way of making bank-to-bank payments as a lower-cost alternative to cards.

GoCardless takes the pain out of getting paid for businesses of all sizes – from multinational corporations like Docusign to fast-growing SaaS businesses like 8×8, and the rising subscription economy including Brompton Bike Hire and Bridgestone’s MOBOX. The company processes US$18bn+ of payments annually across more than 30 countries. In 2020, it showed resilience throughout the pandemic with strong performance and an increase in new bookings of 100%. In addition, GoCardless expanded its technology offering with Success+, a payments intelligence tool powered by machine learning, to help businesses optimise their retry strategy when payments fail.

Hiroki Takeuchi, CEO and co-founder of GoCardless, said: “This funding round demonstrates the strength of the business and the confidence both our customers and investors have in GoCardless. We’re incredibly proud to have seen continued business growth in such challenging times, and to have been able to continue supporting our customers – helping them stay in control of their payments and cash flow.

“We believe that open banking is set to disrupt the payment landscape by introducing new, simpler and more secure ways of making bank-to-bank payments that will compete with the traditional card networks. Our investment in open banking innovation will create a uniquely valuable payment offering – continuing to provide our customers with the best way to collect recurring payments.”

Matt Harris, partner at Bain Capital Venturessaid: “We’re excited by GoCardless’ enormous growth potential in a massive and largely untapped market. In particular, we’re seeing strong early results as GoCardless moves beyond SMBs to serve mid-market and enterprise customers and expands its international footprint to address a growing need for bank debit processing. We have enormous confidence in Hiroki and the entire GoCardless team to build a multi-billion dollar company that will redefine the payments industry.”

GoCardless’ investment in its open banking strategy aims to:

  • Provide an end-to-end recurring payment solution for its merchants: first-time payments via bank debit can take on average two to three days to process, prompting merchants to use alternative methods such as cards for the first payment. Instant first payments will offer a lower-cost alternative to cards, before the recurring collection continues via bank debit
  • Expand into the adjacent e-commerce market: develop a unique bank-to-bank payment method for e-commerce payments made to merchants that customers use on a regular basis. This will provide an alternative to cards that will significantly lower transactions costs for merchants
  • Enable businesses to collect international payments: provide businesses of all sizes with global access to Open Banking / PSD2 and its equivalents around the world, all delivered into their existing bank accounts in local currency
  • Provide businesses with a complete open banking payment processing service, including features such as refunds, payment reconciliation and error handling.

Open Banking, and its equivalents around the world, are designed to open up banking data to provide consumers and businesses with access to better services that can save them time and money.