LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--GoCardless, an innovative new online payment platform backed by Accel Partners, is launching PayLinks, an easy to use product that enables any business or person to collect one-off, regular and pre-authorised payments online via a shareable link.
It takes under a minute to sign-up for PayLinks and all you need is an email address and a bank account. To collect a payment, a user simply enters an amount and a description, and GoCardless generates a URL - the PayLink - that the user can share across the web. As co-founder Tom Blomfield describes it, “it’s like a Bit.ly for payments - when someone clicks your link, you get paid.”
PayLinks can be embedded on users’ websites as a ‘Buy now’ button, emailed out to customers with invoices, or tweeted to millions of followers. To make a payment, a payer just clicks the link and enters their payment details into a secure payment page. PayLinks can be used by anyone - from e-commerce sites, to charities, to contractors, to friends who want to share bills.
The links were designed as a solution to the eye-wateringly complex application process people currently face to take payments: anyone can start collecting money instantly.
PayLinks has been in private beta since February and has seen promising early traction, with test users having already used it to collect thousands of payments. It has been used for everything from selling beef jerky subscription boxes to bill splitting between friends. Co-founder Hiroki Takeuchi says, “PayLinks has been our biggest feature request by far and uptake in the beta alone has been impressive. We’re excited to see what people do with it - this could really transform online payments.”
PayLinks is the second product from GoCardless, which earlier this year launched a REST API wrapper for bank transfers. Since launching in the UK, over 2000 businesses have signed up, including accounting software companies like Kashflow, which offers the product to its small business customers. “Going with GoCardless was a no brainer,” says Duane Jackson, Kashflow CEO, “the API is super easy to work with and the 1% fees are the best around - my merchants love it!”
As co-founder Matt Robinson remarked, “The goal of GoCardless is to make payments as simple as possible. We believe that PayLinks is a natural extension of our API product; it’s designed to be used by literally anyone, and it is also a great way for merchants interested in a deeper API integration to get a flavour for what we can offer.”
About GoCardless
GoCardless is a next generation payment company offering an API wrapper for bank transfer. The company is backed by Y Combinator, Accel Partners and Passion Capital.