Instant Bank Pay is an add-on feature available to GoCardless merchants that uses the Open Banking platform to allow customers to make an instant bank payment directly from their mobile banking app. Instant Bank Pay is great for one-off purchases, where instant confirmation is needed before goods or services can be fulfilled.

How do Instant Bank Payments differ from Direct Debits?

If you’ve used GoCardless you will be familiar with Direct Debit mandates and initiating new payment requests. Instant Bank Payments are essentially a way to receive a single one-off payment against an invoice. It works by providing your customer with a QR code that once scanned will setup a new payment in the customer’s mobile banking app. The customer can then review the payment and simply confirm.

Like regular bank payments, authorisation is instant and the invoice will be marked as paid. This is different to Direct Debits that can take 5-7 days to be fully authorised.

How do I enable Instant Bank Pay?

If you have a GoCardless account and you’ve linked it to QuickFile you will not need to do anything more, Instant Bank Pay will automatically be available to all your customers paying an invoice within their QuickFile client area.

If you’ve not yet opened an account with GoCardless head over to your QuickFile dashboard and click on “Account Settings” and then “Manage payment options”. From the left hand menu select GoCardless and then click on the “Activate” button, you will then be redirected to GoCardless where you can create your new account.

Instant Bank Pay walk-through

To better understand the payment journey for Instant Bank Pay we’ve put together this walk-through.

1. An invoice is created and then sent to your client.

2. When your client clicks to view the invoice they will have an option to “Pay now”. They can then select to pay using GoCardless from their mobile banking app.

3. The client will be redirected to GoCardless where they can enter their sort code and account number.

4. A QR code will then be generated and the client can then scan this using the camera on their mobile device. This will generate a link which will take them into their mobile banking app.

5. In the client’s mobile banking app they will be presented with the pre-loaded payment details. All they need to do now is check the amount and confirm.

6. The payment will now be authorised and the client will be shown a confirmation message and returned to the QuickFile client area.

7. Within 2-10 minutes the invoice in QuickFile should then update as PAID and the payment will be assigned to the GoCardless holding account. In this 2-10 minute window there remains a small chance that the payment will be declined, if this happens a declined message will be shown on the invoice and in the QuickFile event log.

How much do Instant Bank Payments cost to process?

To keep things simple GoCardless have adopted the same pricing for Instant Bank Payments that they currently have for their standard Direct Debit payments. You can view the GoCardless live pricing page here.

GoCardless Pricing

How long does it take for the funds to reach my bank account

As is the case with standard Faster Payment / BACS type bank payments the funds are authorised instantly. The payment is made directly to GoCardless and then paid out within 1-2 days.

Which banks are supported?

GoCardless currently support all major UK banks in the Open Banking ecosystem. Other offshore European banks are not supported at this time and only GBP invoices can be collected using Instant Bank Pay.