Direct debit is one of the oldest mechanisms in banking — and one of the most underrated. GoCardless was founded in London in 2011 with a simple observation: recurring payments were broken for everyone except the very largest companies, and fixing that was worth building a business around. Its platform makes it easy for any company to collect bank payments directly, bypassing card networks and the fees that come with them. For subscription businesses, platforms, and marketplaces, the appeal is straightforward — lower costs, better success rates, and more control. GoCardless has since expanded across Europe and beyond, adding open banking payment initiation to its product suite and building a global bank payment network that now processes over $30 billion annually. It's an infrastructure company in the truest sense — not the most visible product in a consumer's life, but essential to the economics of the businesses they subscribe to. In a payments landscape increasingly defined by card rails, GoCardless is a reminder that bank-to-bank payments are faster, cheaper, and more resilient than the alternatives.