Did you know that 90 percent of tech startups will fail?
RocketSpace gives tech startup founders an unfair advantage on the path to startup success. RocketSpace members experience sustained productivity, efficiency, and growth. Since 2011, RocketSpace has accepted Seed to Series C funded tech startups with a minimum viable product in place. With easy access to industry-leading tech entrepreneurs, investors, and advisors, members can avoid the most common growth mistakes. As such, Uber, Spotify, and Zappos have all called RocketSpace home.
Each year, RocketSpace welcomes new startup teams that contribute to the strength of the tech ecosystem. In fact, GoCardless uses the RocketSpace tech community to unlock powerful growth. In this article, learn how GoCardless scaled to new heights at RocketSpace.
RocketSpace London Member Profile: GoCardless
Quick Facts
- Founded by Hiroki Takeuchi, Tom Blomfield, and Matt Robinson in 2011.
- GoCardless is a bank-to-bank payment specialist committed to transforming the Direct Debit payment industry with a digital platform that has processed more than £4 billion in transactions.
- The company was named as the United Kingdom's fastest-growing technology company in Deloitte's 2017 UK Technology Fast 50.
- GoCardless raised $22.5 million in Series D in 2017.
How Does it Work?
Until now, SMEs (Small-to-Medium Enterprises) could only access Direct Debit by applying for a merchant account directly through a bank. GoCardless is a completely automated Direct Debit payments provider, allowing customers to take, track, and automatically reconcile payments through the GoCardless dashboard and REST API.
Additionally, GoCardless has partnered with popular business platforms including Xero, Sage, and Quickbooks to save businesses even more time. GoCardless is the only provider to support Direct Debit payments in a variety of schemes including the Bacs Payment Schemes Limited (Bacs), Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), Bulk Electronic Clearing System (BECS), and Bg Autogiro. GoCardless plans to expand into Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, Norway, and the United States.
Question + Answer:
Ahmed Badr, head of legal at GoCardless, recently met with RocketSpace to discuss the company's journey thus far and how GoCardless uses the RocketSpace tech ecosystem to scale:
How has GoCardless revolutionized the payments industry?
Badr: As a growing number of businesses go global, they face endless frustrations in managing payments across multiple territories. GoCardless has the perfect head start to solving one of the financial world’s most enduring challenges. We’ve engineered a way to simply plug recurring payments into existing systems across the world, so businesses can focus on the issues that really matter.
Our users are already collecting payments across the UK, Eurozone, and Sweden. Australia and Denmark are coming soon, with more to follow. Over the coming months and years, our mission is to enable businesses around the world to process recurring payments from anywhere, to anywhere — in any currency.
How does GoCardless stand out from the competition?
Badr: We’re bank-to-bank payment specialists and we're focused on making it easy for small businesses to collect payments with Direct Debit; while giving larger businesses a more flexible, transparent and online Direct Debit solution. User experience is really important to us, and that’s why we work with our extensive partner network to build apps within the systems that our customers use every day, saving them even more time and giving additional functionality — for example, by allowing them to reconcile payments automatically.
What does the future of GoCardless look like?
Badr: As mentioned, we are building a global bank-to-bank network that allows customers to take payments from anywhere to anywhere and in any currency. We will continue to build out our partner software network, to make sure that our customers can take payments with GoCardless in the most efficient way — from within the systems they’re already using.
We will also be making the most of new Open Banking standards here in the UK and internationally to deliver a better service to our customers. Until now, banks have been the sole owners of financial data like account balance or payment history.
Are there any big "lessons learned" has GoCardless as grown?
Badr: Of course, there have been many lessons along the way, but one of the biggest has been around recruitment. We have learned that it’s essential to hire the right people at the right time in order to effectively scale. And for us the ‘right people’ means not only with the right expertise, skills, and experience, but people who fit with our GoCardless values (always start with ‘why’, be humble, take pride and act with integrity).
Scale Like GoCardless at RocketSpace
Are you ready to work alongside the industry's best? RocketSpace exclusively admits Seed to Series C funded tech startups with a minimum viable product in place. RocketSpace's flexible workspace, warm introductions to venture capitalists, and premium coworking amenities have supported 18 tech unicorns in achieving billion dollar valuations.
Steps from London's Angel Tube Station, RocketSpace has everything you need to scale in 2018.
