For a UK practice collecting fees in 2026, the providers worth a look are Access PaySuite, Adfin, GoCardless and London & Zurich, plus Socket if you want the mandate signed with the engagement letter. What decides it is the cost of a large annual fee note, whether your clients see your name on their statement, and what connects to your ledger.
In this article
The short version
- GoCardless publishes a complete rate card and Adfin publishes rates and caps. London & Zurich publishes indicative tiers, and Access PaySuite a floor rate its own SmartDebit page contradicts.
- The cap decides an annual fee note. On £3,000 a capped provider charges single figures and an uncapped 1% charges around £30.
- Above £2,000 the uplift on the excess is 0.3% at GoCardless and 0.15% at Adfin.
- Socket collects nothing itself, but its own page names Adfin or GoCardless for capturing the mandate in a proposal approval.
- Xero and QuickBooks are named by all four collection providers, and not one of them names Sage.
At a glance: four providers and one route to the mandate
| Provider | Best for a practice | Published rate | Cap | Xero and QuickBooks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Access PaySuite | Hundreds of small monthly fees | "From 8p per transaction" | None published | Both, mainly via Zapier |
| Adfin | Fee collection and chasing together | 1.0% + 20p | £4 | Both, two-way sync |
| GoCardless | A price you can read today | 1% + 20p on Standard | £4 | Both, named |
| London & Zurich | A first fee book with no SUN | "Pricing around 1%" | None published | Both, named |
| Socket | Mandate at engagement-letter signature | £10 to £150 a month | n/a | Xero and QBO billing |
From each provider's own pages. Alphabetical, because no independent UK ranking exists. Socket is practice software rather than a collection provider, so its price isn't comparable with the rest of the column.
What a practice can find out before it asks for a quote
If you've tried to price this yourself, you'll have found half the answers aren't there. Knowing which half is more use than a table of estimates.
| Provider | Published | Not published |
|---|---|---|
| Access PaySuite | A floor rate, a worked example, "No setup fees", "No commitment" | Percentage fees, minimums, failure and chargeback charges, VAT |
| Adfin | Rates, the cap, the high value uplift, the club rate for members | VAT, any failure or chargeback fee, who qualifies for 1.0% instead of 1.5% |
| GoCardless | Four plans, caps, add-on prices, the charity discount, VAT position | The amount of the refund fee its support pages say applies |
| London & Zurich | Indicative tiers, and a promotion running on the access date | Caps, setup fees, minimum term, failure charges, settlement timescale, VAT |
| Socket | Four plans by active client count, and the add-on modules | Which basis the headline price is on, until you check the App Store |
Two of those gaps will change what you budget.
Access PaySuite disagrees with itself. Its pricing page says "From 8p per transaction" and its SmartDebit page says "transaction fees from just 4p", both their own pages on the same day. The pricing page then works an example: 500 payments a month at £30 average value costing "around £215/month". At 8p that would be £40, so about £175 a month of it isn't itemised.
And only GoCardless states a VAT position. It charges VAT on transaction fees invoiced to UK merchants, so 1% + 20p reads as 1.2% + 24p unless you can recover it. The other three say nothing either way, ours included, so if your practice is partially exempt, ask first.
The cost of collecting a fee note
The figures below are arithmetic on each provider's published wording, not quoted prices, and they show why the cap matters more than the headline percentage.
| Fee note | Adfin | GoCardless Standard | London & Zurich Foundation |
|---|---|---|---|
| £250 a month | £2.70 | £2.70 | around £2.50 |
| £1,200 a quarter | £4.00 | £4.00 | around £12 |
| £3,000 a year | £5.50 | £7.00 | around £30 |
Adfin and GoCardless both cap the transaction fee at £4, so on £3,000 the difference is the uplift on the £1,000 above the £2,000 threshold: 0.15% against 0.3%. London & Zurich publishes no cap on any tier, so "around 1%" runs all the way up.
Access PaySuite is left out of that table on purpose. A pence-per-transaction rate can't be compared with a percentage without knowing your average fee, and its own two pages differ by a factor of two. On a £250 fee note, 8p is far cheaper than 1%, though whether 8p is the rate you'd be offered isn't knowable from the page.
1. Access PaySuite
The payments arm of The Access Group, and the current home of SmartDebit, acquired in September 2021.
What you get:
- Three models: the bureau's SUN, your own SUN through their bureau, or direct submission to Bacs
- Your practice name on client statements with your own SUN, the bureau's name without one
- Automated retries, with "real-time insight into success rates"
- Xero and QuickBooks named as integrations, reached mainly through Zapier
The commercial detail:
- Pricing: "From 8p per transaction" for smaller businesses, "No setup fees" and "No commitment", with final pricing "based on volume and transaction value". Their SmartDebit page contradicts it at 4p, so get yours in writing.
- Reviews: Trustpilot 4.5 out of 5 from 346 reviews (user-reported). Their own page displays 4.7 from 369, overstating both.
- Who it suits: your fee book is mostly small monthly amounts, where pence per collection lands well below a percentage.
- Limitation: no self-serve signup, so every route is a quote, and no practice management integration is named on any page we read.
2. Adfin
A UK payments platform collecting by direct debit, card or open banking, then chasing what's unpaid.
What you get:
- One rate across methods, with the cap on direct debit and bank payments
- Core credit control included, chasing over email, WhatsApp or SMS from your own domain
- Two-way sync with Xero or QuickBooks, and automatic reconciliation
- Socket, Engager.app and Sodium named as practice integrations
The commercial detail:
- Pricing: 1.0% + 20p per successful transaction, capped at £4, plus 0.15% above £2,000 on a direct debit. Accountants and Bookkeepers Club members are quoted at 0% + 20p on payments, and there's a second tier at 1.5% + 20p, all of it on our pricing page.
- Reviews: Trustpilot 4.5 out of 5 from 12 reviews (user-reported), a thin base.
- Who it suits: you want fee collection, chasing and reconciliation on one contract.
- Limitation: no collection in euros or dollars, no Sage, and the 1.5% tier is published without saying who qualifies for it.
3. GoCardless
The largest dedicated bank debit brand in the UK, and the only provider here with a rate card you can act on today.
What you get:
- Four plans, from Standard through Advanced and Pro to a custom package
- Collection on a single shared Service User Number on Standard, so no bank sponsorship
- Your practice name on client statements as a £50 a month add-on
- "350+ integrations", with Xero and QuickBooks named
The commercial detail:
- Pricing: Standard 1% + 20p capped at £4, Advanced 1.25% + 20p capped at £5, Pro 1.4% + 20p capped at £5.60, plus 0.3% above £2,000 on direct debits, charged outside the cap. Charities get 25% off standard transaction fees, and fees exclude VAT.
- Reviews: Trustpilot 2.5 out of 5 from 2,369 reviews against G2 4.6 from 321, plus the Xero App Store at 3.45 from 198, all user-reported. Either of the first two alone would mislead you.
- Who it suits: you want bank debit only, at a price you can read today.
- Limitation: on Standard your clients see GoCardless unless you buy the £50 add-on, and no practice management integration is named.
4. London & Zurich
An independent UK direct debit bureau and facilities-management provider, FCA authorised under firm reference 712747, three decades in the market.
What you get:
- A managed service where they obtain a Service User Number for you through their sponsor bank
- A bureau service instead, if you already hold your own SUN
- A shared SUN, pre-built signup pages and phone support on the Foundation tier
- A branded SUN, Bacs compliance and API access on the Business tier
The commercial detail:
- Pricing: indicative tiers only. Foundation is "Pricing around 1%", Business "from 0.5% or 20p", Enterprise "Banded pricing that reduces as you grow". That Business wording doesn't say whether the 20p replaces the percentage or adds to it.
- Reviews: none could be retrieved. Trustpilot returned an error on every mirror tried, and no G2 or Capterra listing was found.
- Who it suits: you're a one or two partner practice with no SUN, and your fee notes are small enough that an uncapped percentage doesn't hurt. Accountancy is one of eleven sectors they list, with TaxAssist as a case study.
- Limitation: no cap on any tier, so a £3,000 fee note at "around 1%" costs around £30. Under the managed model your clients' money reaches their account first and comes to you "as fast as possible".
5. Socket, for the mandate at signature
A proposal and engagement platform for practices. Socket doesn't collect fees, so it's here for one thing: it captures the mandate when the client says yes.
What you get:
- "Capture direct debits in the proposal approval flow with Adfin or GoCardless", in their own words
- Engagement letters signed with the proposal in "a one-signature approval"
- Version-controlled templates, signed digitally
- Monthly invoices posted to Xero or QBO, plus Zapier and webhooks
The commercial detail:
- Pricing: £10 a month up to 20 active clients, £25 up to 100, £50 up to 500 and £150 up to 1,500, billed annually. The Xero App Store lists the same plans at £20, £50, £100 and £300 monthly "exclusive of tax", exactly double, so the site's figures are the annual basis.
- Reviews: Xero App Store 5 out of 5 from 13 reviews (user-reported). Thirteen reviews is thin.
- Who it suits: your fee agreement and your mandate keep arriving weeks apart, and you'd rather they were one step.
- Limitation: it collects nothing on its own, so you still need a provider behind it. Sage isn't mentioned, and the practice systems on its signup form are a migration question, not integrations.
Getting the mandate signed with the engagement letter
Most practices lose time in the same gap. The fee is agreed, the engagement letter goes out, and the mandate request follows as a separate email a week or two later, by which point the client has moved on to their own work. Every mandate nobody signs becomes an invoice somebody chases by hand.
Socket's features page describes capturing direct debits "in the proposal approval flow with Adfin or GoCardless", so on the published record you've got two options and Socket names both. Adfin names Socket from its side too, so the integration is confirmed from both directions, on our accountants page.
Whichever route you take, check what your client signs in one sitting. One approval covering the engagement terms and the mandate means the fee and the collection start on the same date. Nothing published tells you what that does to your recovery rate, so treat it as a workflow gain instead of a collection claim.
What connects to your ledger
Xero and QuickBooks are named by all four collection providers, and Socket posts its monthly invoices to Xero or QBO. Adfin describes a two-way sync with automatic reconciliation, GoCardless publishes "350+ integrations", and Access PaySuite routes most of its through Zapier. Those descriptions aren't equivalent, and only a trial will tell you whether a part-paid fee note reconciles without somebody opening the ledger.
Sage is the gap. None of the five names Sage anywhere on the pages we read, so if your practice runs Sage, that question goes to every provider on your shortlist before anything else.
Practice management is thinner still. Adfin names Socket, Engager.app and Sodium, and the other three name no practice system at all. Worth asking about if your client records live in Karbon or Xero Practice Manager.
How to choose
| Your situation | Start here | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You want the price in writing today and nothing else | GoCardless | The only complete self-serve rate card, with VAT stated |
| Your fee notes are annual and sizeable | Adfin or GoCardless | Both cap at £4, and the uplift on the excess is 0.15% against 0.3% |
| You want collection and chasing on one contract | Adfin | Fees, chasing and reconciliation in one place, with practice integrations named |
| You have no SUN and want a person to call | London & Zurich | They obtain the SUN through their sponsor bank |
| You collect hundreds of small monthly fees | Access PaySuite | Pence per collection can undercut a percentage at low values |
| Mandates keep arriving after the engagement letter | Socket, with Adfin or GoCardless behind it | One approval covers the terms and the mandate |
| You bill in euros or dollars | GoCardless | International collection is published, and Adfin doesn't collect foreign currencies |
| Your practice runs on Sage | Ask all of them | Nobody in this set names Sage on a page we could read |
How we compared these providers
Every figure came from the provider's own web page, and every one of those pages is listed at the foot of this article so you can check it. Where a provider doesn't publish something we've said so instead of estimating, and where two of its own pages disagree we've printed both. Providers are alphabetical, because no independent UK ranking exists and a numbered order would imply one.
Review scores are third-party, quoted with the count and labelled user-reported. Where two platforms disagree sharply we quote both, and where no score could be retrieved we say so instead of borrowing one from a comparison page.
Collecting fees on a mandate, with the chasing in the same place? Book a demo or see Adfin pricing.
Common questions
Can a client sign a direct debit mandate when they sign the engagement letter? Yes. Socket's features page describes capturing direct debits "in the proposal approval flow with Adfin or GoCardless", so the engagement terms and the mandate can go into one approval. Nothing published measures what that does to your recovery rate.
What does it cost a practice to collect a £3,000 fee note by direct debit? On published wording, £5.50 with Adfin and £7.00 with GoCardless Standard. Each of them caps the transaction fee at £4 and then adds an uplift on the £1,000 above £2,000, 0.15% against 0.3%. London & Zurich publishes no cap, so "around 1%" is around £30.
Which direct debit providers connect to Xero and QuickBooks? All four collection providers name both. Adfin describes a two-way sync with automatic reconciliation, GoCardless publishes "350+ integrations", and Access PaySuite reaches them mainly through Zapier. Socket posts its monthly invoices to Xero or QBO.
Do any of these providers integrate with Sage? None of the five names Sage on any page we read. That doesn't prove nothing exists, but a Sage practice has to ask each provider directly, and ask what the integration does.
Will my clients see my practice name on their bank statement? With GoCardless Standard they see GoCardless unless you buy the £50 a month add-on. London & Zurich puts a branded SUN on its Business tier, and Access PaySuite shows your name if you use your own SUN and the bureau's if you don't. Adfin's pages don't address it.
Can a small practice collect direct debit without its own Service User Number? Yes. GoCardless collects all its Standard merchants on one shared SUN, London & Zurich will obtain a SUN for you through their sponsor bank, and Access PaySuite offers a bureau SUN. Your own bank sponsorship is the slower route, not the only one.
Sources
- Access PaySuite — direct debit pricing (accurate as of August 2026)
- Access PaySuite — SmartDebit (accurate as of August 2026)
- GoCardless — pricing (accurate as of August 2026)
- London & Zurich — pricing (accurate as of August 2026)
- Socket — features (accurate as of August 2026)
- Socket — pricing (accurate as of August 2026)
Adfin is one of the providers compared in this article, and Adfin publishes it. All pricing is each provider's own published pricing; no page carries an effective date and providers change their prices, so check before you commit. The cost table is arithmetic on published wording rather than a quotation. Review scores are third-party and quoted with their counts. Last updated August 2026.
