Switching and consolidation
15 min read
September 29, 2026

Best payment platforms for accountancy firms in 2026

Adfin team

For a UK practice collecting its own fees in 2026, the options worth reading are Access PaySuite, Adfin, Chaser, Credit Hound, GoCardless, Kolleno, London & Zurich, Paidnice, Satago plus Socket. Not one publishes an accountant or partner price. Every partner programme here is a form and a call, so the figures below are the list prices your clients would pay.

In this article

The short version

  • No vendor here publishes an accountant, partner or wholesale price. All five partner programmes are an application form and a call.
  • Paidnice's £19 per entity per month is the only per-client figure published anywhere, and it isn't badged as an accountant price.
  • Access PaySuite's pricing page says "No commitment" while its own Terms and Conditions V5 set a 12-month initial term, 90 days' notice and an early termination fee of the previous three months invoiced.
  • Kolleno's initial term is 24 months. London & Zurich publishes no customer terms at all, so you can't read what leaving costs.
  • GoCardless publishes the best exit terms in this market, including a contractual right to your clients' mandate details.

At a glance: ten options for a practice

Alphabetical, because no independent UK ranking of these exists. Socket is practice software instead of a payment provider, and it earns its place on mandate capture.

What no vendor publishes

You have probably tried to cost this already, so start with the parts you can't cost.

No accountant price exists anywhere in this market. Chaser promises "Generous discounts on our range of plans" and a Partner Hub for managing your client licences, without a percentage, a per-client rate or a wholesale rate, and its outsourced credit control page uses the words "flat monthly fee" without giving a fee. Satago's Sage accountants page offers "three months of Satago's accountant-grade subscription for free", and that subscription's price appears nowhere on the site, so after three months you're negotiating blind. Kolleno's partners page is an enquiry form and a phone number. Paidnice says accountant plans are "available upon request". Credit Hound publishes a per-user rate by ledger and nothing for your practice.

The one published per-client figure in the whole market is Paidnice's entity add-on at £19 per entity per month on top of a Pro plan. It's not badged as an accountant price, and it's the only arithmetic a practice can do from a published page.

VAT is the next gap. GoCardless says its fees exclude VAT and that it charges VAT on transaction fees invoiced to UK merchants, so 1% + 20p reads as 1.2% + 24p if you can't recover it. Nobody else in this set states a position either way, ours included, and on a fee book that difference is 20% of your collection cost.

And no pricing page here carries an effective date. Across the wider payments market only PayPal's does, dated 15 July 2026, so you can see how unusual a dated rate card is. Treat every figure here as a snapshot and get your own in writing.

Onboarding, and getting the mandate signed

Practices lose the same fortnight over and over. You agree the fee, your engagement letter goes out, the mandate request follows as a separate email, and by then your client is back on their own work. Every mandate nobody signs becomes an invoice your team chases by hand.

Three proposal tools publish a way to capture the mandate inside the approval, handing your client to a payment provider to hold it. Socket's features page describes capturing direct debits "in the proposal approval flow with Adfin or GoCardless", so it names two and you pick. GoProposal does it through GoCardless. Ignition does it through its own payments product, and its help centre names Stripe as the processor, with your client's statement reading "IGNITIONPAY".

For clients already on a mandate elsewhere, those mandates can move through the Bacs Direct Debit Bulk Change Process without anybody signing again, or your clients sign a new mandate with the incoming provider. Which route applies to your book is that provider's own operational judgement instead of a scheme rule, so get the answer in writing before you commit your client base.

Who invoices whom

Two different purchases hide inside this decision, and mixing them up can cost you money.

Collecting your own fees means you contract with a provider, your name or theirs reaches your client's bank statement, and your fee notes reconcile into your own ledger. With GoCardless Standard your client sees GoCardless unless you buy the £50 a month branding add-on. London & Zurich puts a branded Service User Number on its Business tier, and Access PaySuite shows your name where you hold your own SUN. Adfin's pages don't address it.

Advising a client on their receivables is the other purchase, and there the reminders built into their Xero or QuickBooks are already paid for. Chaser, Credit Hound, Kolleno, Paidnice, Satago all chase invoices sitting in somebody's ledger, so the licence, the tone of the emails and the escalation decisions belong to whoever owns it. Settle that before you resell chasing as a service, because your client's customers reply to whichever mailbox sent the chase.

One more practical filter. Sage is named by Chaser and by Credit Hound, and by nobody else here on a page we could read, so if you or your clients run Sage 50 or Sage 200, ask that first.

What leaving costs a practice

You're committing your client base and not just your own collections, so exit terms carry more weight for you than for a single business. Here's what each one publishes.

Read from each vendor's own published terms. "Not published" means the documents don't address it, which tells you nothing about what the term would be.

Three rows deserve saying in words. Access PaySuite's pricing page says "No setup fees" and "No commitment" while its own Terms and Conditions V5 of April 2026 set the 12-month term, the 90 days' notice and an early termination fee "equal to the previous three months invoiced by Us prior to any bulk cancellation". Access PaySuite publishes both documents, so we quote both. Kolleno's 24-month term at £650 per user per month is the largest commitment here by a distance. And London & Zurich publishes no customer terms, so you cannot discover its notice period, its exit fee or whether you get your clients' mandate list back.

GoCardless is the opposite case and we'd rather credit it than have you find out for yourself. Its Bank Debit Terms commit it to "entering into a bulk change deed" and to "a machine-readable list of each of your Customers and their Payment Scheme Mandate details via a secure transfer mechanism", at clause 7.1. Only Chaser and Paidnice publish anything comparable.

1. Access PaySuite

The payments arm of The Access Group, and the home of SmartDebit since 2021.

  • For a practice: three Service User Number models, so your name or the bureau's appears on client statements
  • Price: "From 8p per transaction" with "No setup fees", against "from just 4p" on its own SmartDebit page
  • Partner price: none published, and no practice system is named
  • Limitation, honestly: its "No commitment" pricing page and its 12-month terms disagree, and no clause makes it hand back your client records

2. Adfin

Collects your fees by direct debit, card or open banking, chasing too.

  • For a practice: Socket, Engager.app and Sodium, plus two-way ledger sync
  • Price: 1.0% + 20p capped at £4, and 0% + 20p for Accountants and Bookkeepers Club members
  • Partner price: published, and our two pages disagree on it
  • Limitation, honestly: no Sage, no euros or dollars, no VAT position, and our /accountants page gives the club rate as "1% + 20p reducing to 0.75%-0%"

3. Chaser

A dedicated chasing platform with a real partner programme, and the widest published escalation.

  • For a practice: a Partner Hub for your client licences, cross-client reporting, the deepest Sage coverage here
  • Price: US dollars on the page a UK buyer lands on, "From $259per month" on Compact
  • Partner price: "Generous discounts" and a "flat monthly fee", neither with a figure attached
  • Limitation, honestly: you can't get your cost in pounds, no practice management system is named, and its terms and help centre give three different notice periods

4. Credit Hound

A Sage-first collections tool published by Draycir, sold through Sage's own marketplace.

  • For a practice: native to six Sage products, so a Sage 50 or Sage 200 practice gets a genuine fit
  • Price: £20 per user monthly on Sage 50, £51 on Xero, and the PayThem payment module £38
  • Partner price: none published on any page read
  • Limitation, honestly: no QuickBooks support in either product, no SMS, and its terms state "All purchases of Services are final"

5. GoCardless

The largest dedicated bank debit brand in the UK, with the only complete self-serve rate card here.

  • For a practice: collection on a shared Service User Number, so you need no sponsorship
  • Price: 1% + 20p capped at £4 on Standard, VAT on top, plus £50 a month to put your name on client statements
  • Partner price: none on the pricing page selling Standard, Advanced, Pro, Custom
  • Limitation, honestly: no chasing sequence is published, retries plus chargeback challenges start on Advanced, and its refund fee amount isn't published

6. Kolleno

Receivables, payables plus reconciliation in one platform, aimed at your larger client books.

  • For a practice: cross-client portfolios, and the only published route to UK direct debit among the chasers, through GoCardless
  • Price: "£ 650 per user/month" on BusinessPay with a published turnover gate above £1m
  • Partner price: none. Its partners page is an enquiry form
  • Limitation, honestly: a 24-month initial term with non-refundable fees, and "extra charges may apply for integrations" without one being priced

7. London & Zurich

An independent Bacs bureau and facilities manager, FCA authorised under firm reference 712747.

  • For a practice: accountancy is one of eleven sectors it lists, TaxAssist Accountants named, and it will obtain a Service User Number for you
  • Price: indicative tiers, "Pricing around 1%" on Foundation and "from 0.5% or 20p" on Business
  • Partner price: none published, and no practice system is named
  • Limitation, honestly: no cap on any tier, so a £3,000 fee note at around 1% costs around £30, and no customer terms are published

8. Paidnice

A rules engine on top of your clients' Xero or QuickBooks for reminders, late fees and interest.

  • For a practice: multi-entity support, and the only published per-client price in this market
  • Price: Essentials £49 monthly, Pro from £74, with extra entities at £19 each monthly and SMS at 5p
  • Partner price: accountant plans are "available upon request", the discounts never quantified
  • Limitation, honestly: it doesn't take the money, billing is in US dollars through Stripe, and Sage arrives on the Custom tier only

9. Satago

Chasing and credit checking with invoice finance behind it. TruFin plc is its parent, and Sage a partner.

  • For a practice: a credit control as a service product, with your first client connection free
  • Price: "£45 per month" Basic, "£80 per month" Premium, "£200 per month" Platinum
  • Partner price: none. An "accountant-grade subscription" is named and never priced, and "Satago Plus" appears on its Sage 50 page but not on the pricing page
  • Limitation, honestly: Basic caps email reminders at 100 a month, and the length of a Subscription Period isn't in the terms

10. Socket

Proposals and engagement letters for practices, with mandate capture built into the approval.

  • For a practice: one-signature approval covering your engagement letter, plus monthly invoices posted to Xero or QuickBooks
  • Price: £10, £25, £50 and £150 monthly by client count, billed annually. Its Xero App Store listing gives the monthly equivalents as £20, £50, £100 and £300 "exclusive of tax"
  • Partner price: none published. Volume discounts are offered on request
  • Limitation, honestly: it takes no money itself, and its own price list doesn't say it quotes annual-billing rates

How to choose

How we compared these

Ten options, read on their own pages: the published pricing and every published set of terms. The sources are listed below so you can check any figure, and where a vendor doesn't publish something we've written that instead of estimating. Where two of a vendor's pages disagree we print both, including ours. The order is alphabetical, since no independent UK ranking exists, and you'll find no closing recommendation here.

Review scores are third-party, user-reported, quoted with the platform and the count. Where two platforms disagree we quote both.

Collecting fees on a mandate, with the chasing in the same place? Book a demo or see Adfin pricing.

Common questions

Do any of these publish an accountant or partner price? No. All five partner programmes are an application form and a call, and the discounts are described without a number. Paidnice's £19 per entity per month is the only per-client figure published anywhere in this market, and it isn't badged as an accountant price.

What does Access PaySuite mean by "No commitment"? Its pricing page says it, and its own Terms and Conditions V5 of April 2026 set a 12-month initial term, 90 days' notice and an early termination fee "equal to the previous three months invoiced". Both documents are Access PaySuite's own, so ask them which governs your Statement of Work.

Which vendor has the longest commitment? Kolleno, at a 24-month initial term renewing in 12-month periods on 90 calendar days' notice, with fees stated as "non-cancellable and non-refundable". At its published £650 per user per month that's the largest commitment in this set.

Can my client sign the direct debit mandate with the engagement letter? Yes. Socket's features page describes capturing direct debits "in the proposal approval flow with Adfin or GoCardless", GoProposal does it through GoCardless, and Ignition does it through its own payments product with Stripe as the named processor. Nothing published measures what that does to your recovery rate.

Whose name shows on my client's bank statement? With GoCardless Standard your client sees GoCardless unless you buy the £50 a month add-on. London & Zurich puts a branded Service User Number on its Business tier, and Access PaySuite shows your name where you hold your own SUN. Adfin's pages don't address it.

Which of these can I leave most easily? GoCardless publishes no minimum term, no notice period and no exit fee, plus a contractual right at clause 7.1 of its Bank Debit Terms to a bulk change deed and a machine-readable list of your clients' mandate details. Paidnice and Socket also let you cancel at any time.

Sources

Adfin is one of the options compared here, and Adfin publishes this article, so weigh our entry accordingly. All pricing is each vendor's own published pricing, alongside their published terms; no page in this set carries an effective date and vendors change prices, so check before you commit. Where a vendor publishes no figure we say so instead of estimating. Review scores are third-party with their counts. Last updated August 2026.

Adfin team