If you're picking a UK direct debit provider in 2026, the realistic shortlist is Access PaySuite, Adfin, Bottomline, GoCardless, London & Zurich and Modulr. What separates them is less the headline rate than whether they publish one at all, whether your fee is capped on a large collection, and whether you need your own Service User Number.
In this article
The short version
- Two of the six publish a rate card you can read in full: GoCardless and Adfin.
- Bottomline publishes no price at all, and Modulr's published plans price outbound payments instead of collections.
- Access PaySuite says "From 8p per transaction" on one page and "from just 4p" on another, read the same day.
- London & Zurich publishes tiers around 1% with no cap, so a big collection costs a percentage of its value.
- No page carried an effective date, and only GoCardless says whether its fees include VAT.
At a glance: the six compared
| Provider | Best for | Published rate | Cap | Own SUN needed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Access PaySuite | Similar-sized collections in volume | "From 8p per transaction" | None published | No |
| Adfin | Collection and chasing in one place | 1.0% + 20p | £4 | Not addressed |
| Bottomline | Mid-market receivables teams | Not published | Not published | No |
| GoCardless | Signing up today at a known price | 1% + 20p on Standard | £4 | No |
| London & Zurich | A first mandate book with no SUN | "Pricing around 1%" | None published | No |
| Modulr | Flat fees with your own SUN | Not published | Not published | Yes, on pages we read |
From each provider's own pages. Alphabetical, because no independent UK ranking exists.
What each provider publishes, and what it doesn't
Most comparison pages fill every cell of the table. Half of these numbers can't be filled, and knowing which half saves you more time than a guessed figure would.
| Provider | Published | Not published |
|---|---|---|
| Access PaySuite | A floor rate, a worked example, "No setup fees" | Percentage fees, minimums, failure and chargeback charges, VAT |
| Adfin | Rates, the cap, the card uplifts, the high value uplift | VAT, any failure or chargeback fee, what puts a business on 1.0% instead of 1.5% |
| Bottomline | Nothing price related. Both buttons route to a demo | Rates, setup and monthly fees, minimum contract, failure charges, VAT |
| GoCardless | Four plans, caps, international rates, add-on prices, VAT position | The amount of the refund fee its support pages say applies |
| London & Zurich | Indicative tiers, plus a promotion running on the access date | Caps, setup fees, minimum term, failure charges, settlement timescale, VAT |
| Modulr | Plan pricing for outbound payments | Any price for direct debit collection |
Three of those gaps deserve saying out loud, because you can't close them on your own.
Bottomline publishes nothing you can budget from. Its UK direct debit page offers "Collect Direct Debit Payments Now" and "Get a Demo", and both go to the same form. If you're deciding this month, an unpriced product is out of reach whatever it can do.
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, 500 payments is £40, so the example carries about £175 a month the page doesn't itemise.
And nobody here, ourselves included, publishes a UK failed payment or chargeback charge. GoCardless comes closest by saying where those fees do apply: "Failure fees only apply in the US, Germany and Austria". With the other five, treat a failed collection as an unpriced event until you've got a quote in writing.
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 name on your customer's statement with your own SUN, the bureau's name without one
- Automated retries, with "real-time insight into success rates"
- Xero and QuickBooks named, 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: you collect a lot of similar-sized payments, and a few pence each lands well below a percentage of value.
- Limitation: no self-serve signup, so every route is a quote. No invoicing and no chasing.
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
- Free retries, with a fallback to card if a collection fails
The commercial detail:
- Pricing: 1.0% + 20p per successful transaction, capped at £4 on bank payments, plus 0.15% above £2,000 on a direct debit. Cards add 1% (premium or EEA) or 2% (non-EEA), with an industry 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're collecting recurring fees and don't want a separate subscription for chasing.
- Limitation: no collection in euros or dollars. The 1.5% tier is published without saying who qualifies for it, and there's no VAT position.
3. Bottomline
A Bacs-approved software vendor and bureau. Bottomline says it processes "over 50% of all Direct Debit/Direct Credit transactions in the UK", their own unaudited claim.
What you get:
- A facilities-managed service for businesses without a SUN, giving indirect access to Bacs
- Automatic re-presentation of a failed collection where the mandate is still active
- Emails carrying an alternative payment link when a collection stays outstanding
- The Xero, QuickBooks and Sage logos displayed, with no implementation detail behind them
The commercial detail:
- Pricing: none published. No rate, setup fee, monthly fee, minimum contract or failure charge appears anywhere, and a guessed pricing URL 404'd.
- Reviews: no independent score could be retrieved for the UK product, so we're not quoting one.
- Who it suits: you're a receivables team with an ERP behind you and room for an implementation project.
- Limitation: you can't budget for it without entering a sales process. Their failure-cost figures, 1% to 6% failing at more than £50 each to resolve, are Bottomline's own.
4. GoCardless
The largest dedicated bank debit brand in the UK, and the only provider here with a complete 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 of your own
- Your name on your customer's statement as a £50 a month add-on, custom checkout at £150
- International collection at a published rate, where the other five publish nothing
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. International runs 2% to 2.4% + 20p, uncapped, and fees exclude VAT.
- Reviews: Trustpilot 2.5 out of 5 from 2,369 reviews against G2 4.6 from 321, plus Capterra 4.0 from 87 and the Xero App Store 3.45 from 198, all user-reported. Either figure alone would mislead you.
- Who it suits: you want bank debit only, you want the price before you speak to anyone, and you may collect outside the UK.
- Limitation: on the entry plan your customer sees GoCardless on their statement unless you buy the £50 add-on.
5. 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, floors it 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 person business with no SUN, and your collections are small enough that an uncapped percentage doesn't hurt.
- Limitation: no cap on any tier, so a £3,000 collection at "around 1%" costs around £30 where a capped provider charges £4. Your customers' money reaches their account first and comes to you "as fast as possible", with no timescale given.
6. Modulr
An FCA-authorised electronic money institution providing accounts and payments, with collections sold alongside the outbound products.
What you get:
- A "Flat per-collection rate", positioned against rivals whose costs "scale with transaction value"
- Your own Service User Number, so your company name appears on your customer's statement
- Collections settling over Faster Payments, with immediate failure notifications
- Retries "on your terms", plus a Pay by Bank request to recover funds in real time
The commercial detail:
- Pricing: the published plans price outbound payments, not collections. Bronze is £30 a month for 80 payments, Silver £110 for 500, Platinum £500 for 3,000. Collection appears in no plan on either pricing page, so the flat-rate idea carries no figure.
- Reviews: Trustpilot 4.5 out of 5 from 130 reviews (user-reported). G2 shows 5.0 from one review, which isn't a score.
- Who it suits: you hold your own SUN or you're willing to get one, and a flat fee would work out below a percentage.
- Limitation: what you can buy off the page pays suppliers and staff, so collection is a sales conversation. Every page we read frames it around your own SUN.
Why these prices can't be compared side by side
Even the published figures aren't measuring the same thing, so ranking by headline rate would rank how each provider chose to express itself.
A percentage and a pence rate cross over. Access PaySuite's 8p is cheaper than 1% on anything above about £8, and far cheaper on a £3,000 collection where 1% is £30 before any cap. A claim about the cheapest provider means nothing unless it states the collection value assumed.
A cap changes the answer above the cap point. GoCardless and Adfin both publish a £4 cap on the domestic transaction fee, London & Zurich publishes none. On a £400 collection the three are close. On £3,000, £4 against roughly £30 is arithmetic on their published wording, not a quoted comparison.
Above £2,000 the uplifts differ. GoCardless adds 0.3% to the amount over the threshold and Adfin adds 0.15% to the same excess, so on a £5,000 collection you're comparing £9 with £4.50, and both fall outside the £4 cap.
VAT is stated once in the whole set. GoCardless charges VAT on transaction fees invoiced to UK merchants, so 1% + 20p is really 1.2% + 24p if you can't recover it. Nobody else says either way, ours included.
And no page here carried an effective date, so you can't tell how old these figures are, so if a number matters to you, open the provider's own page before you commit.
How to choose
| Your situation | Start here | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You want a price you can read today and bank debit only | GoCardless | The only complete self-serve rate card here |
| You collect in euros or dollars | GoCardless | International collection is published, and Adfin doesn't collect foreign currencies |
| You want collection and chasing on one contract | Adfin | Direct debit, cards and credit control on one rate |
| You collect above £2,000 regularly | Adfin or GoCardless | Both cap at £4, and the uplift on the excess is 0.15% against 0.3% |
| You have no SUN and want a person through setup | London & Zurich | They obtain the SUN through their sponsor bank |
| You collect thousands of small payments | Access PaySuite | Pence per collection can undercut a percentage at low values |
| You hold your own SUN and want flat fees | Modulr | Your name on the statement, though the price is a conversation |
| You're a receivables team inside an ERP | Bottomline | Deep failure handling, if you can run a procurement |
| You need Sage instead of Xero | Ask all of them | Only Bottomline shows a Sage logo, and nobody documents it |
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 site.
Want the full cost picture including chasing and reconciliation? Book a demo or see Adfin pricing.
Common questions
Which UK direct debit providers publish their prices? GoCardless publishes four plans with caps and its VAT position, and Adfin publishes rates, the cap and the uplifts. London & Zurich publishes indicative tiers, Access PaySuite a floor rate its own SmartDebit page contradicts, and Bottomline nothing at all. Modulr prices outbound payments but not collections.
How much does direct debit cost per transaction in 2026? On published rates, around 1% + 20p with a £4 cap at entry level. GoCardless Standard is 1% + 20p capped at £4, Adfin 1.0% + 20p capped at £4 on bank payments, and Access PaySuite quotes "From 8p per transaction". Neither Bottomline nor Modulr publishes a collection price.
Can I collect direct debit without my own Service User Number? Yes, with most of them. GoCardless collects all its Standard merchants on one shared SUN, London & Zurich will obtain a SUN for you, Access PaySuite offers a bureau SUN, and Bottomline runs a facilities-managed service. Modulr frames collections around you holding your own.
Do UK direct debit providers charge for failed payments? Not one of the six publishes a UK failure fee. GoCardless states that failure and chargeback fees apply only in the US, in Germany and in Austria, the clearest published position here. The other five say nothing either way, so ask for failure and indemnity charges in writing.
Is a pence-per-transaction rate cheaper than a percentage? That depends on your collection value. 8p is cheaper than 1% above roughly £8 per collection, and on a £3,000 fee note it's pennies against about £30 uncapped. Below that crossover a percentage can be cheaper, and a capped percentage narrows the gap at the top end.
Do direct debit fees include VAT? Only GoCardless says. Its pricing page states that it charges VAT on transaction fees invoiced to UK merchants, so 1% + 20p is 1.2% + 24p to a business that can't recover VAT. No other provider here, Adfin included, states a VAT position, so ask.
Sources
- Access PaySuite — direct debit pricing (accurate as of August 2026)
- Access PaySuite — SmartDebit (accurate as of August 2026)
- Bottomline — UK direct debit (accurate as of August 2026)
- GoCardless — pricing (accurate as of August 2026)
- GoCardless — pricing and fees support article (accurate as of August 2026)
- London & Zurich — pricing (accurate as of August 2026)
- Modulr — pricing for business (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. Review scores are third-party and quoted with their counts. Last updated August 2026.
