GoCardless delivers Open Banking features in Germany

GoCardless is launching two Open Banking features in Germany, its one-of-payments offering and an anti-fraud feature, amid the projected rising adoption of Open Banking in Europe.

Instant Bank Pay, which is already available in the UK, allows merchants to handle one-off bank-to-bank payments. For GoCardless merchants who use its direct debit service, Instant Bank Pay offers them an alternative to handling single non-recurring payments. The payments fintech said its research showed that in Germany 88% of merchants with recurring revenues needed to collect extra one-off payments.

The company pointed to examples like purchasing extra goods or services or topping up an account outside of a customer’s regular payment schedule. It says by using Instant Bank Pay, merchants in Germany will be able to future-proof their businesses.

Moreover, it is also rolling out Verified Mandates, an anti-fraud feature, which has already been launched in the UK, that combines Open Banking with direct debit. The fintech says the tool can stop payment fraud before it happens. Verified Mandates uses Open Banking to automatically and instantly verify customer information as part of the flow of setting up a new direct debit mandate, thereby reducing payment fraud, GoCardless said.

Open Banking is relatively new in Germany, with slow consumer adoption, but GoCardless expects this number to grow amid projections that Europe will have 64 million active users of open banking by 2024, as per the press release.