Payments Strategy
Adyen for Platforms vs. GoCardless in 2026: A Buyer's Guide for Platforms and Recurring Revenue Businesses
Adyen for Platforms and GoCardless are two of the most common names that show up when a CTO or CFO starts evaluating payment infrastructure, but they answer different questions. Adyen for Platforms is embedded payment infrastructure for marketplaces, SaaS platforms, and on-demand businesses that need to process payments on behalf of their users. GoCardless is a bank-to-bank payment specialist for businesses that need to collect recurring payments directly from their own customers. The two products are usually complementary rather than competing, and the real evaluation question is which of those two jobs your business needs done.
This guide covers what each platform does in 2026, the pricing reality (GoCardless restructured its plans in 2025; the old Plus/Pro tiers no longer apply), how to decide between them, and what changes after the Mollie acquisition of GoCardless closes in mid-2026. Every claim links to its primary source.
Platform Infrastructure Versus Recurring Bank Payments
These two products sit in different categories that solve different problems.
Platform payment infrastructure is the layer marketplaces, SaaS platforms, and on-demand services use to embed payments into their own product. The platform’s users are themselves businesses that need to accept payments, and the platform processes on their behalf. This means handling onboarding and verification of those users, splitting payments between the platform and the user, managing risk for transactions the platform did not initiate, and paying out funds to multiple parties. Adyen for Platforms is the category leader for enterprise-scale platforms; Stripe Connect is its closest competitor.
Bank-to-bank recurring payments are a different category entirely. These products help a business collect recurring payments from its own customers (subscriptions, memberships, dues, invoices) by pulling funds directly from customer bank accounts via Direct Debit (UK/EU), ACH (US), or open banking. The transaction does not touch the card networks, which means lower fees, fewer expirations, and higher reliability over time, but also slower settlement and narrower payment-method coverage. GoCardless is the largest dedicated provider in this category.
Some businesses end up using both. A SaaS marketplace might use Adyen for Platforms to power payments for its users while using GoCardless to collect its own subscription fees from those same users.
Adyen for Platforms in 2026: What It Does and Who It Serves
Scale and Current State
Adyen processed €1.4 trillion in total processed volume in 2025, with full-year net revenue of €2.4 billion (up 18 percent year over year) and a 53 percent EBITDA margin. Platforms is the company’s fastest-growing segment, and embedded financial product issuing volume grew eight times year over year in 2025 as platforms put cards into their core workflows. In-store and unified-commerce volume reached €173 billion in H2 2025 alone, up sharply from the prior year.
In 2025, Adyen launched Intelligent Money Movement, a unified layer for money-in, money management, and money-out, and joined the Agentic AI Foundation alongside OpenAI, Google, Cloudflare, Visa, and Mastercard. Adyen Uplift, the company’s AI conversion optimizer, lifted payment authorization rates by up to 6 percent during pilot, according to the 2024 annual report.
Best Fit
- Marketplaces connecting buyers and sellers with split-payment requirements
- On-demand platforms (delivery, mobility, services) with instant-payout needs to providers
- SaaS platforms monetizing payments as a core product feature
- Multi-region businesses needing local acquiring and 200+ payment method support
- Platforms ready to offer embedded financial products (business accounts, card issuing, treasury) to their users
Pricing in 2026
Adyen for Platforms uses Interchange++ pricing. Each card transaction is broken into three components: the interchange fee paid to the customer’s issuing bank, the scheme fee paid to Visa or Mastercard, and Adyen’s own acquirer fee, which starts at 0.60 percent per transaction plus a fixed amount (around €0.11) and decreases at higher volume. The published average total fee for European consumer cards under Interchange++ is roughly 1 percent.
There are no setup fees or monthly minimums published, but most platforms negotiate custom contracts that bundle processing, payouts, fraud, and embedded financial products. The model rewards platforms with high domestic volume in regulated markets (EEA, UK, Australia) where debit interchange is capped low; it can be more expensive than flat-rate alternatives for cross-border premium credit traffic.
What Merchants Tend to Praise and Complain About
Enterprise customers consistently cite three strengths: a single platform handling online, in-app, and in-store payments without separate stacks; local acquiring in 30-plus markets, which lifts authorization rates for global merchants; and depth of fraud and risk tooling. The most common complaints are integration complexity (timelines run weeks rather than days), a less intuitive merchant dashboard than Stripe’s, and selectivity during onboarding for platforms whose users fall outside Adyen’s preferred risk profile.
GoCardless in 2026: What It Does and Who It Serves
Scale and Current State
GoCardless is a London-based bank payment company that operates in 30-plus countries. The company processed £79.2 billion in payment volume in FY25 (ending 30 June 2025), doubling from the prior year partly through its September 2024 acquisition of Nuapay. Group revenue reached £160.9 million in FY25, up 22 percent year over year, and the company recorded its first EBITDA-positive quarter on an adjusted basis in Q4 FY25 (April to June 2025), with net losses down 27 percent for the year. The combined platform now serves more than 100,000 businesses and processes over $130 billion in payments annually.
Two product shifts matter for 2026 buyers. First, GoCardless is transitioning from a Direct Debit specialist to an end-to-end payment provider; it launched Outbound Payments (disbursements) in 2025 and is preparing to launch commercial Variable Recurring Payments. Second, in February 2026 the company introduced its Model Context Protocol implementation, giving developers an LLM-native interface to the GoCardless API.
The largest change for buyers, however, is structural. On December 11, 2025, Mollie agreed to acquire GoCardless in a deal valued at €1 billion-plus. The transaction is expected to close in mid-2026 subject to regulatory approval, and will produce a combined entity serving more than 350,000 businesses across Europe with integrated card payments, local methods, and bank payments under one provider. The implications for buyers are covered in the dedicated section below.
Best Fit
- Subscription and SaaS businesses collecting monthly or annual fees from their own customers
- Membership organizations, gyms, clubs, and charities collecting recurring dues
- Utility, telecom, and property companies collecting regular bills or rent
- B2B service providers automating recurring invoice collection
- Businesses primarily operating in markets with mature Direct Debit or ACH adoption (UK, EU, US, Australia, NZ)
Pricing in 2026
GoCardless restructured its plans in 2025. The old Standard, Plus, and Pro tiers were replaced; the current published plans are Standard, Advanced, and Pro. Several rates moved upward in the transition, particularly the Pro tier, so any internal modeling based on pre-2025 pricing should be refreshed.
- Standard: 1 percent + £0.20 per domestic transaction, capped at £4
- Advanced: 1.25 percent + £0.20 per domestic transaction, capped at £5
- Pro: 1.4 percent + £0.20 per domestic transaction, capped at £5.60
- International payments: 2 to 2.4 percent + £0.20, no cap
- High-value surcharge: 0.3 percent on the portion of any domestic transaction above £2,000
- Chargeback fee: £5, applied after 15 chargebacks per month
- Refund fee: £0.50
- Custom enterprise pricing available for high-volume merchants; the published G-Cloud pricing schedule shows fixed-fee options around £0.85 per transaction with an annual platform fee of £12,000 for public-sector buyers
What Merchants Tend to Praise and Complain About
Customers cite cost reduction relative to card processing (single-digit-percent fees instead of the 2.9 percent-plus that cards carry), automated mandate management that eliminates payment chasing, and reliability of recurring collection once a mandate is in place. The most common complaints are settlement speed (Direct Debit takes 3 to 6 working days for full confirmation, versus near-instant for cards), narrow payment-method coverage (no card or wallet support), and a Trustpilot review profile that runs noticeably weaker than the G2 profile, suggesting different experiences between SMB and mid-market customers.
How to Choose Between the Two
Three questions tend to settle the decision. The first one usually settles it on its own.
1. Are You Processing Payments for Your Users or Collecting Payments From Them?
If your product enables third-party businesses to accept payments from their customers (a marketplace, a SaaS platform that lets users invoice, an on-demand service), the answer is platform infrastructure. Adyen for Platforms is built for this; GoCardless is not. If your product collects subscription fees, dues, or invoices from your own customers, the answer is the opposite. GoCardless is purpose-built for that job and roughly two-thirds cheaper than card processing for recurring transactions of typical size.
2. How Important Is Settlement Speed?
Cards settle in days; Direct Debit settles in 3 to 6 working days. For most subscription and invoice businesses, this difference is invisible to the customer and irrelevant to the operating model. For platforms that pay out to users daily or instantly (delivery, mobility, gig work), Direct Debit cannot serve as the payout method and card processing through Adyen is required. GoCardless’s Instant Bank Pay product narrows the gap for one-off transactions but does not change the recurring-collection settlement profile.
3. What Is Your Payment-Method Coverage Requirement?
If a meaningful share of your customer base prefers cards, digital wallets, or local non-bank methods, GoCardless alone cannot serve them. The right answer is often a hybrid: a card processor (Adyen, Stripe, or another PSP) for one-off and card-preferred transactions, plus GoCardless for the recurring collection workload. Many subscription businesses run exactly this configuration, with GoCardless handling 60-80 percent of recurring revenue and a card processor catching the rest.
After Mid-2026: What the Mollie Acquisition Changes
On December 11, 2025, Mollie announced it had signed an agreement to acquire GoCardless. The deal is expected to close in mid-2026 subject to regulatory approval. For buyers shortlisting GoCardless this year, the acquisition is worth understanding because it changes the strategic picture in three ways.
First, the combined entity will offer cards, local methods, and bank payments under one provider. Mollie powers card and hyperlocal payments across 30+ European markets and the UK, and GoCardless adds the bank payment leg. The combined platform will serve more than 350,000 businesses and positions itself as a full-stack European payment platform, which puts it in closer competitive territory with Adyen for European mid-market merchants than GoCardless alone was.
Second, integration is being conducted in a phased manner with stated continuity of service. The companies have emphasized that customer experiences and contracts will not change abruptly. For a business evaluating GoCardless today, this means continuing to buy what is on sale now, with the upside of additional capabilities (card processing through Mollie, integrated fraud and reconciliation tooling) becoming available over time. For a business evaluating Mollie, GoCardless capabilities will become part of the platform after close.
Third, the deal accelerates a shift toward full-stack European payment providers. Buyers comparing Adyen for Platforms to GoCardless in late 2026 will increasingly find themselves comparing Adyen for Platforms to Mollie + GoCardless, which is a fundamentally different evaluation. The platform-versus-collection categorical distinction will still hold for marketplace and on-demand use cases (where GoCardless never competed), but recurring subscription businesses will have a more direct head-to-head choice between an enterprise platform and a unified mid-market platform.
Regulatory Context for 2026
Two regulatory shifts are worth tracking when evaluating either platform this year.
The EU’s Payment Services Directive 3 and Payment Services Regulation reached provisional political agreement on November 27, 2025, with final compromise text published on April 23, 2026. Both texts are expected to enter into force in 2027 after an 18 to 24 month transition period. PSD3 and PSR will replace PSD2 and the Electronic Money Directive, harmonize conduct rules across member states, expand verification of payee to all credit transfers, and shift more fraud liability to payment service providers. Both Adyen and GoCardless will absorb most of the implementation work; for merchants, the practical impact is stronger fraud reimbursement rights and tighter rules around delegated strong customer authentication.
PSD3 also expands the regulatory perimeter for open banking and payment initiation services, which is particularly relevant for GoCardless’s commercial Variable Recurring Payments roadmap. The rules around third-party access to payment accounts will tighten, but the underlying use case (recurring pull payments via open banking) will become easier to operate at scale once PSR is in force.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Adyen for Platforms a Competitor to GoCardless?
Not directly. Adyen for Platforms is embedded payment infrastructure for businesses processing transactions on behalf of their users. GoCardless is bank-to-bank payment collection for businesses billing their own customers. The two products solve different problems and are often used together: a SaaS platform might use Adyen for Platforms to power payments for its users while using GoCardless to collect its own subscription fees from those same users.
How Much Cheaper Is GoCardless Than Card Processing?
For typical recurring transactions, GoCardless’s 1 percent + £0.20 fee capped at £4 compares to roughly 2.9 percent + £0.20 for card processing. A £100 subscription costs £1.20 via GoCardless versus approximately £3.10 via a card processor. A £500 invoice hits the cap at £4 versus around £14.70 via cards. The savings scale with both transaction value and volume. The trade-offs are slower settlement (3 to 6 working days versus near-instant) and narrower coverage.
What Happens to My GoCardless Contract After the Mollie Acquisition?
The companies have stated the integration will be conducted in a phased manner with service continuity for existing customers. Existing GoCardless contracts will not change at close. Over time, GoCardless capabilities will become part of the Mollie platform, and Mollie capabilities will become available to GoCardless customers. The merger is expected to close in mid-2026 subject to regulatory approval; until then, GoCardless and Mollie operate as separate businesses.
Can I Use Adyen and GoCardless Together?
Yes. The most common pattern is Adyen handling card and wallet acceptance (whether through Adyen for Platforms or another Adyen product) and GoCardless handling recurring bank-debit collection. Most subscription businesses with international customers run this configuration, with the orchestration logic handled in-house or through a third-party payments hub.
What Does the Move From PSD2 to PSD3 Mean for Recurring Bank Payments?
For most merchants the day-to-day impact of PSD3 and PSR taking effect in 2027 will be indirect. Direct Debit mandates and ACH authorizations will continue to operate under existing schemes. The biggest change for recurring bank payments is around commercial Variable Recurring Payments and other open-banking-initiated recurring flows, where PSD3 expands the regulatory perimeter and clarifies the rights and responsibilities of payment initiation providers. GoCardless is investing heavily in this area, with commercial VRPs on the 2026 roadmap.
Building the Right Payment Architecture
The right answer for a 50 to 500-person company is rarely a clean choice between two products, particularly when those products solve different problems. Most growing businesses end up with some mix of bought and built: a primary platform or processor for the bulk of volume, custom logic for the cases the platform does not handle well, and a clear plan for how the architecture evolves as volume, geography, and product complexity change.
Clear Function helps engineering and finance leaders work through those decisions and build the integration layer that connects payment platforms to the rest of the business. If you are evaluating Adyen for Platforms, GoCardless, or a hybrid architecture (including planning for the Mollie acquisition), get in touch.
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