How Open Banking Feature From GoCardless and Sage Aids SMBs

For small businesses, manual bookkeeping is an expensive administrative anchor that consumes valuable hours better spent on growth. Relying on paper bank statements and physical ledgers introduces human error, clouds real-time cash flow visibility and slows down transaction reconciliation. 

Rewriting the rules of invoicing, GoCardless and Sage are coming together with a fix for this problem by expanding the two company’s long-standing strategic partnership.

The former's expansion will incorporate its open banking payment feature, Pay by Bank, directly within Sage Business Cloud Accounting. This will add instant one-off account-to-account payments alongside existing GoCardless Direct Debit capabilities.

Tom Metcalfe, Director, Global Partnerships at GoCardless, says: “Sage is a long-standing partner and their launch of Pay by Bank underscores our shared commitment to helping businesses thrive. 

“For small businesses managing tight margins, high credit card fees and delayed payments are a massive burden on resources. This expanded partnership solves that pain point directly by combining automated recurring collections and instant open banking payments, allowing teams to protect their cash flow and keep card costs down.”

Removing admin

The partnership will allow Sage users across the UK and Ireland to offer their customers a simple, card-free way to instantly pay their bills online.

By embedding the Pay by Bank option directly within Sage invoices, small businesses will have a faster, simpler way to collect one-off charges. These charges sit outside regular Direct Debit schedules, such as upfront setup fees, extra services or account top-ups. 

Because payments are made directly from one account to another, without the risk of expired or lost card details, small businesses can protect their cash flow. 

This would significantly reduce failed payments on the first try while avoiding traditional card networks to cut single transaction costs by an average of 54%.

The integration also eliminates the heavy administrative burden of manual bookkeeping. Once a customer pays their invoice, the payment status automatically syncs back to the Sage dashboard to reconcile the open balance. 

This automation saves finance teams from hours of manual data entry or matching transactions against paper bank statements.

Paul Fairless, Fintech Partner Strategy and Business Development Director at Sage, says: “For small businesses, every hour spent on admin is time taken away from serving customers and growing the business. 

“By bringing Pay by Bank natively into Sage Business Cloud Accounting, we're closing the loop between invoice creation and real-time bookkeeping. It means payments can be reconciled automatically, reducing manual work and giving businesses a clearer view of their cash flow.”

Transforming modern e-commerce

Essentially an evolution of the bank transfer, Pay by Bank is a digital payment method that allows customers to pay directly from their bank account to another. 

It uses open banking technology as its framework, meaning there is no card data involved. This allows businesses to bypass traditional card networks like Mastercard and Visa completely.

The solution is soon to be e-commerce-ready and it has already established itself as the new standard for one-off payments. In the near future, this open banking framework will expand to support recurring payments.

From startups to household names, GoCardless operates as a global bank payment company serving more than 100,000 businesses. The company processes in excess of US$130bn of payments annually across more than 30 countries. 

By using AI-powered solutions, GoCardless improves payment success and reduces fraud, with open banking connectivity to more than 2,500 banks.