GoCardless vs Adyen

PayPal

Venmo

Stripe

PayPal provides an end-to-end suite of tools that can integrate with a business's existing systems and service providers. Its network of shoppers and businesses provides AI-driven data insights to help businesses reach new customers and drive results.

Venmo is a digital wallet and payment gateway that allows customers to send money and make purchases via mobile device, and share activity via the purchase feed

Stripe is a financial infrastructure platform that enables businesses to accept payments online and in person. It offers a suite of APIs for payment processing, subscription management, fraud prevention, and financial services integration Stripe provides both developer-focused tools with extensive documentation and no-code solutions for businesses without technical staff.

At GoCardless, we believe bank payments are the best way to pay and get paid. Over 100,000 businesses around the world use GoCardless to collect and send account-to-account payments confidently and securely - without the chasing, stress, or hidden fees.

Accounting Integration

Alerts/Notifications

Billing & Invoicing

Customizable Branding

Data Security

Electronic Payments

Invoice Creation

Invoice History

Multi-Currency

Online Invoicing

Online Payments

Payment Gateway Integration

Payment Processing

Payment Reconciliation

Project Billing

Projections

Recurring Invoicing

Recurring/Subscription Billing

Reporting/Analytics

Search/Filter

Status Tracking

Transaction History

The GoCardless integration most frequently cited by reviewers is Xero, an accounting product rated 4.2 out of 5 for its integration with GoCardless.

Integrations

Reviews for GoCardless come from a wide variety of industries, including health, wellness and fitness (12% of reviewers), accounting (11%), and education management (11%). The most frequent use case for GoCardless cited by reviewers is payment processing (72% of reviewers).

GoCardless

Web-based

Worldpay for Enterprise

Standard

Advanced

Custom

Owner

They demanded excessive documents no other U.S. bank or processor required, cited UK and Canadian rules instead of U.S. law, made me get an attorney letter just to approve my account, and then deactivated me two weeks later with no explanation other than “security reasons.”

App Integration Specialist

A sandbox environment is available, but it's not possible to fast forward through time to test payments as they progress from submission to payout.

Financial Controller

My favourite feature about GoCardless is the easy way you can collect and process payments.

Founder and Director

The customer support team are genuinely helpful but it is limitations in the product offering that let them down.

IT and AMS Assistant

Our experience with it is going well so far, it seems to work well with imis and it tracks the information without any glitches, so at the moment we have no complaints.

The direct debit with Quickbooks, when it works.

We therefore have no plans to stop using GoCardless, even after a tech audit.

Head of School

Some of the banking terminology is perhaps unique to Britain, or at least very different from what's commonly used in the U.S., so there's a small learning curve to figuring out how transactions are processing.  

Business Analyst

Although the company has good scalability options, sometimes it doesn’t work properly with high load of payments. Although it is very rare.

They allow you accept payments from customers, and THEN they suspend your account.

Overall, GoCardless has been an excellent platform for international payment.

admissions associate

It doesn't work for American bank accounts, for instance

This was the only way we were able to afford to start accepting online payments for tuition/fees right off the bat.

They have over $40,000 of my funds and have holding my account hostage for over two weeks and counting...

Director and Tutor

GoCardless is so easy to use and doesn't over-complicate things by adding unnecessary features or settings.

Director

Its helped to automate the invoice billing function, saving time, and costs because I'd say its at least 80% cheaper than the software provider we were using before.

The dashboard is user-friendly and it doesn't take long to get your head around it.

The interest-free period was extremely generous too.

IT Manager

need to have a more explicit mail when had payment issue

Case Manager

Excellent system for regular payments to one supplier.

I cant even refund the client and get paid another way as the error is always that i dont have the funds to do a refund even though they are holding the original ACH amount.

I would like to integrate it more with my financial system.

Finance manager

We used Gocardless since 2015, I discovered the product in 2020 and I recommend it because the product is still ramping up, more ergonomic and try to add in France the "instant direct banking" to earn efficacity an security.

The integration with Xero has removed so much of the manual input when reconciling the debtors accounts.

Simplicity and straightforward notification before and after payments.

It's posible to deal with our reccuring billing but also one time payments. Success+ is also a good product of Gocardless to which automatically restarts failures.

Sometimes the Direct Debit collected doesn't automatically allocate itself within our QBO system to the customer who paid...

Office Manager

We have been able to encourage more of our clients to sign up to this payment system as it is easy and straightforward for them to manage.  

Easy to integrate and good pricing for mobile payment.

Technical Director

instead of accepting direct debits seemlessly, it prompted clients to pay monthly, which some did and some didn't.

Insurance agent

It’s a very productive and affordable software to use.

Company Director

Before, people had to download a page, print it off, sign it, and scan or post it back...

This has made our debt collection process so much more efficient and so easy to rectify any payment issues.

Head of Theatre

My overall experience with GoCardless is incredibly positive and I would definately recommend anyone using this to make their life easier collecting payments from customers.

Director of Operations

Great, not had any issues with them since using them for over 2 years.

It was suppossed to be our solution for accepting direct debits

Billing Analyst 

Doing high volume collections (which need to be done manually rather than set to collect on due date) can be frustrating having to collect in stages and then having to scroll through to the next batch

At first I just offered it on my Xero invoices, but since moving my invoicing and subscriptions to WooCommerce, I have implemented it on there too.

Managing Director 

Takes monthly and one time payments, shows payments taken and processed and invoices to both parties

retry functionality for failed invoices is good although could be improved automations and integrations with the likes of zapier

Our preferred payment method is BACS or GoCardless.

Manager

The low fees for direct debits, as well as the much lower churn rate, when compared to credit cards are what really make this a winner.

integrates well with Xero allowing total flexibility on variable direct debit collections.

Accountant

For the client it would be good to make it clearer what each payment was for - our old system made our name clear and the reference but some clients seem to get confused with GoCardless - minor issue

American banks don't have the "right" documents and they "hold" your money until they believe that  your American Bank exists.  

Payout times are unpredictable, unlike Stripe, you can bill someone and know it will take 3 days to arrive, maybe 7 if you're still making your first few payments, however with GoCardless you don't know exactly when payment will be taken from the client unless you're using a recurring payment set for a specific day each month, also GoCardless doesn't produce invoices so you have to set it up with Quickbooks to produce invoices, which can also be a bit tedious.

Digital Marketing Specialist

Recently we have updated our onboarding process and to integrate a seamless customer experience (i.e. the customer not being navigated to a GoCardless page) we need to subscribe to their Pro tier which is very expensive.

Commercial manager

Never having to worry, plan or stress about monthly fees or subscriptions. Once customers are set up on a direct debit your whole business Is far more efficient.

Pricing

Account Verification

Direct Debit

Client Support

Bugs and Issues

Bank Account Integration

Security and Access Control

Account Deactivation

Ease of Use

Mid-size Business

Large Enterprises

Small Business

Freelancers

Adyen is a payment processing platform designed for businesses of all sizes across multiple sectors and offers tools for accepting payments in multiple formats and optimizing growth.

ACH Payment Processing

Compliance Management

Credit Card Processing

Debit/Credit Card Processing

Electronic Signature

Fraud Detection

Gift Card Management

In-Person Payments

Mobile Payments

Multi-Channel Management

Payment Fraud Prevention

PCI Compliance

Point of Sale (POS)

Purchasing & Receiving

Receipt Management

Sales Trend Analysis

SSL Security

Third-Party Integrations

Visual Analytics

Adyen

iPhone

iPad

Android

QA Manager

Adyen has excellent sandbox tools, detailed docs, and the testing cards that make the integration validation easy to use and efficient.

Some API error messages could be clearer to support faster troubleshooting during complex test flows.

Senior analyst and advisor

Minimum monthly fees, which makes it sometimes difficult to start with, then pricing not fully transparent and limited customization of the checkout UI

Great payment acceptance capabilities, great APIs, overall payment experience is top notch.

Ecommerce Manager

A good platform with an easy to navigate dashboard. Despite shortfalls with downloads this is a good platform to work with.

Product Manager

Integration took a longer then we expected, mainly because of the paperwork they needed. But it is reasonable since "payment industry"

GoCardless vs Adyen Comparison (2026)

GoCardless

Adyen

Overview

Video & Screenshots

Pricing

User reviews

Key features

Integrations

Alternatives