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Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: 1 of 4 dimensions proven

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by GoCardless Ltd · gocardless.com

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Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Skeptic

Weighted verdict

Knows the headline rate covers the cheapest card in the cheapest country. Reads for the currency conversion markup, the chargeback fee, the payout delay and the clause that lets the provider freeze funds without a reason — and treats a missing licence number as an answer.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Skeptic

Payment methods & local coverage

How this is scored

Which methods a European customer can actually pay with — cards and wallets, SEPA Direct Debit, and the local methods that decide conversion per country — judged on the named list per market rather than on a method count.

0 — Cards only, or a method list with no statement of which countries and currencies each one covers.

3 — Major cards and wallets plus one or two European methods, with local coverage stated vaguely ("many local methods") and no SEPA Direct Debit.

5 — Cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay, SEPA Direct Debit, and the main local methods for DACH and Benelux (iDEAL or Wero, Bancontact, Klarna or invoice) listed by name with the countries they serve.

8 — Broad EU coverage named per country — including methods such as BLIK, TWINT, Przelewy24, EPS and Wero — multi-currency acceptance with settlement currencies stated, and which methods support refunds and recurring charges documented per method.

10 — Coverage is documented as a matrix a merchant can plan against: every method with its countries, currencies, refund, partial-capture and recurring support, and the provider's own acquiring versus third-party routing stated per method.

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The Skeptic

SEPA Direct Debit coverage is documented country by country across the 36-country zone with the euro-only limitation stated plainly, and Instant Bank Pay availability is given by currency — but the product is bank debit only, with the vendor itself stating there are no card fees because it pulls from the bank. We found no public information on card or wallet acceptance, and no named local instant methods such as iDEAL or Bancontact; the captured guidance even says local currency in non-eurozone countries needs national schemes, and we found nothing showing those are offered. 5 8 10 1 2

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Checkout, SCA & fraud

How this is scored

The path from basket to authorised payment under PSD2: hosted and embedded checkout options, 3-D Secure and SCA exemption handling, fraud screening, and what the provider documents about keeping legitimate payments from failing.

0 — A single redirect page with no statement on 3-D Secure, SCA or fraud screening.

3 — Hosted checkout with 3-D Secure 2 mentioned, fraud screening as an unexplained add-on, and no word on exemptions or declined-payment handling.

5 — Hosted and embedded checkout options, 3-D Secure 2 with SCA handled by the provider, configurable fraud rules, and the resulting PCI DSS scope for each integration type stated.

8 — SCA exemptions (low value, transaction risk analysis, merchant-initiated) applied and documented, fraud tooling with rules and risk scores exposed to the merchant, network tokens or account updater, and liability shift explained per flow.

10 — Authorisation is engineered and shown: exemption strategy documented, soft-decline retry handled, authorisation-rate reporting by method and issuer country, and a checkout the merchant can run in their own domain while staying at the lowest PCI scope.

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The Skeptic

Hosted pages, drop-in flows and a custom API path are all documented with webhook confirmation, and the SCA position is written down rather than hand-waved — paperless Direct Debit mandates out of scope, with an EBA confirmation quoted. Fraud rules are configurable via Protect+ and bank details are verified at checkout, but we found no public information on liability shift, declined-payment retry logic at authorisation, or authorisation-rate reporting, and the standalone fraud detection product is stated to still be in development. 7 8 2 9

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Subscriptions & recurring payments

How this is scored

Charging the same customer again: card-on-file and merchant-initiated transactions, SEPA mandates, subscription logic and dunning — and whether the stored payment credentials can leave with the merchant.

0 — No stored payment methods; every charge needs the customer to pay again.

3 — Card-on-file tokens for repeat charges, but no SEPA mandate handling, no subscription logic, and failed-payment handling left entirely to the merchant.

5 — Stored cards and SEPA Direct Debit mandates, merchant-initiated transactions documented, and basic subscription plans with scheduled charges and failed-payment notifications.

8 — Subscription billing with trials, proration and plan changes, smart retries and dunning, card account updater, mandate management with pre-notification, and a documented process for exporting payment tokens to another provider.

10 — Recurring revenue is a first-class product: usage-based and invoice-based billing, dunning with measurable recovery, token migration in and out documented with a stated timeline and format, and recurring support stated for every local method that allows it.

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The Skeptic

This is the core of the product: subscriptions, instalments, variable recurring payments and a single flow that takes an instant first payment while setting up the mandate, with pause, resume and cancel exposed in the API, SEPA pre-notification rules documented, and Success+ retries claiming a 70 per cent average recovery of failed payments. But a subscription whose amount varies must be cancelled and recreated, and we found no public information on trials, proration, or a documented process and timeline for exporting mandates to another provider — migration is answered with 'take contact to learn more'. 9 10 6 1 2

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Settlement, reconciliation & API

How this is scored

Getting the money and knowing what it was: payout cadence and currencies, fee itemisation per transaction, reports that match a bank statement, and an API and webhooks a team can build finance processes on.

0 — Payouts on an unstated schedule, one net amount per payout, and no API or report beyond an on-screen list.

3 — A stated payout schedule and CSV exports, but fees netted invisibly into payouts and an API with thin documentation.

5 — Payout frequency and delay stated, per-transaction fee breakdown in reports, a documented REST API with webhooks and a test mode, and exports that link each payout to its transactions.

8 — Configurable payout schedules and settlement currencies, reconciliation reports that match bank lines, accounting integrations or exports named, a versioned API with idempotency and published rate limits, and a public status page with incident history.

10 — Finance can close the month from the provider's data: interchange and scheme fees itemised per transaction, automated reconciliation to the ledger, a deprecation policy for the API, and full historical data exportable after the contract ends.

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The Skeptic

Payouts run daily per currency and the Payout Items API itemises each payout into ten credit and debit types including the GoCardless fee and app fee, with CSV payout reports covering refunds, chargebacks and late failures, plus named accounting integrations with Xero, Sage and QuickBooks. But the payout cadence is not shown as configurable, exports vanish after 3 days with download links that expire in an hour, and we found no public information on API versioning, idempotency, published rate limits or a status page with incident history. 12 11 2 9

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Licence, risk & account terms

How this is scored

Who holds the merchant's money under which licence, and what the contract lets the provider do on a bad day: freezes, reserves, termination, chargebacks. Scored on what the terms and the imprint state, not on reputation.

0 — No regulated entity named; terms allow freezing funds and terminating the account at any time with no notice, reason or timeline.

3 — A licence mentioned without the entity, supervisor or register number, and terms that permit reserves and holds with no stated limits.

5 — The regulated entity named with its supervisor and licence type, safeguarding of merchant funds stated, chargeback fees and dispute process published, and a notice period for ordinary termination.

8 — Entity, supervisor, register number and passporting stated per country; reserve and rolling-hold conditions defined with limits and release timelines; freeze and termination terms with reasons and a route to appeal; PCI DSS level and attestation published.

10 — The bad day is written down: every regulated entity in the chain named with register links, reserve calculation disclosed, funds release timelines after termination committed, a documented complaint route to the supervisor, and exit terms that include handing back payment tokens and transaction history.

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The Skeptic

The regulated identities are genuinely published — FCA authorisation under register number 597190, Companies House number 07495895, and a Paris entity in the footer under ACPR — alongside a structured set of merchant and regulated terms. But we found no public information on safeguarding of merchant funds, reserve or rolling-hold conditions, freeze and termination notice, or a route to appeal, and the vendor confirms failed-payment and chargeback fees apply without publishing an amount anywhere we saw. 4 13 2 14

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Who the contracting and regulated entity is, and where transaction and cardholder data are processed and stored. Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline. The card schemes are US-based for every provider, so the scheme layer is not held against any one vendor; the part the vendor controls is.

0 — Non-EU contracting entity, no statement on where payment data is processed, and subprocessors unnamed.

3 — An EU licensed entity contracts, but payment and customer data is processed outside the EU by default without an explained safeguard, or the subprocessor list is absent.

5 — EU contracting and regulated entity, EU processing stated for core payment data, but the group parent or significant parts of the chain (fraud scoring, support, analytics) are non-EU without a stated safeguard.

8 — EU entity and EU licence, payment and cardholder data processed and stored in the EU on named infrastructure, subprocessor list published with locations, and a DPA covering the processing the provider does as processor versus as controller.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: European ownership, EU entity and licence, every processing location and subprocessor European, European rails (SEPA, Wero or national schemes) offered alongside cards, and certifications published.

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The Skeptic

The captured legal page gives the UK company and its FCA authorisation while the site footer names the Paris company as the ACPR-licensed entity providing the payment services, so the contracting picture is not clean from the public pages. We found no public information on where payment data is processed or stored, on ownership, on subprocessors or their locations, or on a data processing agreement splitting processor and controller roles — the privacy page was captured and yielded none of it. 4 3

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Pricing transparency

How this is scored

Whether a merchant can compute the effective fee for their own mix of cards, countries and methods — including cross-border and currency conversion markups, chargebacks, refunds, payouts and monthly fees — from public pages alone.

0 — No public prices at all; every rate is a sales conversation.

3 — A headline percentage exists, but it is unclear which cards and countries it covers, and cross-border, currency conversion or chargeback fees are unstated — the effective fee is unknowable.

5 — Rates published per main method with domestic and international cards distinguished, but at least one commonly incurred cost (currency conversion markup, chargeback fee, payout or monthly fee) is missing or "on request".

8 — Every method priced publicly, cross-border and currency conversion markups stated, chargeback, refund and payout fees listed, minimum monthly fees and contract term given, and whether the model is blended or interchange++ said plainly.

10 — Complete fee computability: the effective rate derivable for a given volume, card mix and country mix — interchange++ with the markup published or a blended rate with every exception listed — plus volume tiers, reserves and every ancillary fee on a public page.

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The Skeptic

A pricing page exists in the navigation promising no setup costs and no hidden costs, and two add-ons are priced exactly — 200 €/Monat for branding, 50 €/Monat for a custom statement name — with VAT treatment and reverse charge stated. But the captures contain no per-transaction rate at all, the vendor confirms failed-payment and chargeback fees apply without amounts, customer email notifications are 'gegen Gebühr', and apart from a 'real exchange rate via Wise' claim we found no public information on conversion markups, payout fees, minimum monthly fees or contract term — the effective fee is not computable from these pages. 2 1

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European sovereignty — proven facts

1 of 4 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Ownership Not determined — uncited Report an error
Data residency Not determined — uncited Report an error
Subprocessors Not determined — uncited Report an error

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

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Sources (14)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Vendor homepage gocardless.com Checked 22 Sep 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Pricing page gocardless.com Checked 22 Sep 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Privacy policy gocardless.com Checked 22 Sep 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Legal notice gocardless.com Checked 22 Sep 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Payment methods & local coverage — found from sitemap gocardless.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Payment methods & local coverage — found from sitemap gocardless.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Checkout, SCA & fraud — found from sitemap gocardless.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Checkout, SCA & fraud — found from sitemap docs.gocardless.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Subscriptions & recurring payments — found from sitemap docs.gocardless.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Subscriptions & recurring payments — found from sitemap docs.gocardless.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  11. 11 Settlement, reconciliation & API — found from sitemap docs.gocardless.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  12. 12 Settlement, reconciliation & API — found from sitemap docs.gocardless.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  13. 13 Licence, risk & account terms — found from sitemap gocardless.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  14. 14 Licence, risk & account terms — found from sitemap gocardless.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →