We offer merchants the option to take either recurring payments or one-off payments. Both of these options are done via the Bank Debit system.
The payment is collected from you according to the payment timings of the relevant payment scheme. Providing your payment is not part of an ongoing subscription, we will notify you of the payment via email when it is created and advise you of when the payment will be collected from your account.
Failures, Refunds and Unauthorised payments
Payment failures
If your payment has failed, the collection can be retried by the merchant you’re paying (providing your Direct Debit mandate is still active).
We would advise you to please get in touch with the merchant you're paying directly to request that the payment be retried. You will receive a notification email before the next collection attempt.
| Please note: GoCardless cannot retry payments, or accept payment directly on behalf of merchants using the GoCardless payment service. |
If you have accidentally made a bank transfer to GoCardless for a failed payment, it should be returned to you automatically.
If the payment has not been returned to you after 2 weeks, please reach out to our support team. It would help if you could please provide us with as much information about your transfer as possible:
- The last four digits of the beneficiary bank account (i.e the account that the payment was sent to)
- The date that this payment was made
- The amount of the payment
- Account holder name
- Any references used
We will then pass this onto our banking operations team to locate the payment and return it to you.
| Please note: If you make a bank transfer directly to GoCardless we cannot pass this onto the merchant. The payment will be returned to you and you will need to reach out to the merchant to request that the payment be retried. |
Refunds
If you require a refund for a payment you’ve made, you would need to get in touch with the merchant you’re paying directly to organise this with them. GoCardless is unable to issue refunds at the payers' request.
Unauthorised payments
If a payment has been collected from your bank account that you didn’t authorise, please don't panic! You are fully protected within Direct Debit scheme regulations and can receive a full refund via your bank.
As a customer, you can obtain a refund for a Direct Debit payment collected from your account in error via your bank. Once it is established that an error has occurred, your bank will return those funds on the same working day.
| Please note: GoCardless cannot claim a refund on your behalf as this must be done by the account holder. |
Please inform our team if a payment has been collected from you in error so that our accounts team can investigate further.