GoCardless, a UK FinTech venture that specialises in recurring payments, has announced a Series F funding round of $95 million, led by Bain Capital Ventures.

It is now valued at over $970 million. The company will use the funding to accelerate its Open Banking strategy, which will include expanding its offering into the e-commerce market.

The plan is to develop a bank-to-bank payment method for online payments made to merchants that customers use on a regular basis. This will provide an alternative to cards that, according to GoCardless, will significantly lower transactions costs for merchants.

Hiroki Takeuchi, CEO and Co-founder of GoCardless, says: “We believe that Open Banking is set to disrupt the payment landscape by introducing new, simpler and more secure ways of making bank-to-bank payments that will compete with the traditional card networks.”

“Our investment in Open Banking innovation will create a uniquely valuable payment offering - continuing to provide our customers with the best way to collect recurring payments.”

Matt Harris, Partner at Bain Capital Ventures, comments: “We’re excited by GoCardless’ enormous growth potential in a massive and largely untapped market.”

“In particular, we’re seeing strong early results as it moves beyond SMBs to serve mid-market and enterprise customers and expands its international footprint to address a growing need for bank debit processing.”

“We have enormous confidence in Hiroki and the entire GoCardless team to build a multi-billion dollar company that will redefine the payments industry.”

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