GoCardless, from the company of the same name in San Francisco, is a recurring payments platform that integrates with the applications businesses use every day, to give businesses more visibility over payments and saving the time on tasks like payment reconciliation. The vendor states they partner with more than 150 billing and subscription software partners globally, including Xero, Sage, QuickBooks, Zuora and Salesforce.
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PayPal Payments Pro
Score 7.9 out of 10
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PayPal Payments Pro is an enterprise-class ecommerce payment solution, that provides payment processing security to build a professional-grade ecommerce site. It can be configured to meet business needs and works across devices. Users can tap into over 390 million active customer accounts around the globe.
GoCardless provides a simple way to take one-off card payments or set up direct debits for customers. Payment links can be included on electronic invoices, and certainly, from a UK perspective, it provides a more professional appearance than using, say, PayPal for …
We believe GoCardless is the best-in-class solution for global companies who wish to streamline payment processing in many countries, especially when integrating within a company website or supported complementary software. It also works very well for recurring payment situations as it can be very streamlined for recurring & auto-payments. This is NOT a tool for credit card processing, so understand that and consider something like Stripe if credit card integration is your goal. The fees for GoCardless may be highly dependent on the anticipated processing volume and size of your business, so do know that very tiny companies may find the fee structure to be higher. For a US-only business, I'm not sure if GoCardless really would make the most sense outside of specifically for integrating within the software for click-thru payment processing. Where GoCardless shines is when your business operates in many countries and is looking for a seamless solution for your customers that also avoids them paying banking fees.
Paypal is great for personal payments as well as business payments for ecommerce of for paying monthly memberships. It is a user friendly software that needs little expertise to get used to. For larger payments, the fees become high therefore it is more suitable for payments of upto few hundred dollars.
PayPal offers me the option of converting my currency deposited in my account to another currency, so I can complete all kinds of payments and send money to employees who are in another country for business reasons.
The mobile phone application is too fast, I can make payments to my employees in a matter of seconds without having to wait for the web version to load.
Scheduled payments are great. PayPal allows me to add a list of contacts to my PayPal Business account, and after adding the contacts, I can schedule payments for a specific day and time. It's easier to make automated payroll payments with PayPal.
Sometimes the UX flow would not deliver the customer back to our site, leaving orders in limbo "Pre-approved" status. The customer would call days later asking why we hadn't shipped it.
The PayPal logo on the checkout page can be kind of large and obtrusive.
They mention new features and programs on their login page, but it's hard to find any details on them deeper in the software.
We have had no issues with GoCardless since it was implemented in our new software. The customers are able to sign up with ease. The reporting on the site is very helpful and the site is easy to navigate
There is no phone support, email only, and the support is slow coming. The support staff often don't read your support query properly, so you waste time having to re-explain yourself. That is the only downside of this product.
Customer service representatives were unable to explain why customer in Australia were unable to make payments using our link. It turned out that customers in Australia must create an account. PayPal's user interface did not reveal this to our customers in Australia. There was plenty about this issue appearing in online forums and PayPal customer service couldn't explain this. This change in PayPal's usability happened between April and May of 2021 and was done without notice to vendors (like us).
It stacks up well against Stripe but I think they serve different purposes. Stripe is better when it comes to integrations, GoCardless is great for recurring payments, particularly for service-based businesses.
I don't think there's really any competition here. There's Venmo (also owned by PayPal) who is now offering business accounts, but it still isn't quite the same. The closest thing in terms of ease of use would be Apple Pay or Google Pay (and there are a handful of others out there, but we offer Apple and Google Pay). As a business, I prefer Apple or Google Pay to PayPal Payments, but we offer either Google or Apple Pay, PayPal, and credit card options and PayPal is always right up there with credit cards. I don't foresee us ever getting rid of PayPal Payments as an option, but we do try to only offer it on request for higher ticket items or high dollar installment purchases.
