GoCardless announces Tim Bunting to its Board after raising $7m from Balderton Capital

– UK, London – GoCardless, the payments platform simplifying online Direct Debit, has announced today that it has raised $7M in Series B funding led by Balderton Capital. Existing investors Accel Partners and Passion Capital also participated in the funding round.

GoCardless makes it simple to accept recurring payments via Direct Debit online. Launched in London in February 2012, GoCardless has quickly grown to become the UK’s largest Direct Debit provider. The company, which has focused on serving subscription services and B2B businesses, is now processing over $200m of transactions per year, having grown by 700% in 2013.

Hiroki Takeuchi, CEO of GoCardless, said, “We believe that payments should be one less barrier to business. Direct Debit is perfect for accepting recurring payments, but it’s been out of reach for most companies up until now. We enable thousands of businesses to access the system for the first time, improving their cash-flow and letting them focus on delivering value to their customers.”

A wide range of companies rely on GoCardless, from small charities to national enterprises. Customers such as Greater Anglia Trains use GoCardless to help them manage growing online ticket sales, whilst minimising legacy software costs and administrative overhead.

GoCardless will use this latest funding to build out its proposition for enterprise customers and expand its engineering team. Takeuchi said, “Our largest customer today is 15 times bigger than that of a year ago. This new funding allows us to recruit the best talent to help us scale our technology to serve the demands of ever larger businesses.”

Tim Bunting, General Partner at Balderton Capital, added, “GoCardless is an exceptional team with the potential to radically improve the way payments are done for businesses. For us, the most distinguishing feature was the feedback from their existing customers, who stressed that the technology they have developed, and the technical team they have built, is world class. We believe this technological advantage, the scalability of the GoCardless model and size of the market it operates in will allow GoCardless to play an important role in the future of online payments.”

Tim will join existing investor Sven Schmidt from Accel on the GoCardless Board. Robert Dighero from Passion Capital also remains on the Board as an observer.

About GoCardless

GoCardless makes it simple for anyone to collect Direct Debits online – instantly, and affordably. The company collects hundreds of millions of pounds a year for UK businesses, and serves more businesses than any other UK Direct Debit provider.

The firm is sponsored by RBS and authorised by the FCA. GoCardless has raised funding from major UK and US venture capital firms including Balderton Capital, Accel Partners, Passion Capital, and Y-Combinator. See here for more information and images or visit our website at GoCardless.com.

About Balderton Capital

Balderton Capital is one of the largest venture capital firms in Europe, committed to finding and helping talented entrepreneurs build great companies. Based in London, the firm manages more than $2.1 billion.

Since 2000, Balderton has invested in over 100 companies, principally across Europe. Notable realised investments include Betfair (the online betting exchange, 2010 IPO), LOVEFiLM (the home entertainment subscription service, sold to Amazon in 2011), MySQL (the open-source database software, sold to Sun Microsystems in 2008) and YOOX Group (the online retailer of leading fashion brands, IPO in 2009). The current portfolio includes innovative companies such as 3D Hubs, Globoforce, Kobalt, Natural Motion, Openet Scytl, Talend, The Hut Group, Wonga, Wooga and WorldStores.

About Accel Partners

Founded in 1983, Accel Partners has a long history of partnering with outstanding entrepreneurs and management teams to build world-class businesses. Accel today invests globally using dedicated teams and market-specific strategies for local geographies, with offices in Palo Alto, London, New York City and Bangalore, as well as in China via its partnership with IDG-Accel. Accel has invested in over 500 companies, many of which have defined their categories, including Angry Birds (Rovio), Atlassian, Cloudera, ComScore, Dropbox, Facebook, Groupon, Imperva, Kayak, Playfish, QlikTech, Spotify, Supercell, and Wonga.

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