GoCardless Says Legacy Payments Fail UK Businesses, Touts Commercial VRPs as Fix

Cards account for 84% of UK retail payments by transaction value, while the near-duopoly of Visa and Mastercard costs businesses £1.5 billion annually. In December 2025, GoCardless commissioned Opinium to survey 489 executives at recurring-revenue businesses. It found that failed card payments, fraud and administrative processing eroded an average of 3.5% of monthly revenue, underscoring the need for payment reform.

On June 2, 2026, GoCardless formally launched Recurring Pay by Bank alongside the UK Payments Initiative. The open-banking service supports flexible, automated account-to-account payments and switches to Direct Debit when a customer’s bank is not supported. The survey found that 91% of decision-makers expected lower operating costs, 89% anticipated improved cash flow and 49% of businesses intended to be early adopters.