📝 Overview

Occasionally a customer's Direct Debit payment through GoCardless will fail, most often because there wasn't enough money in their bank account. Unlike Stripe card payments, GoCardless payments aren't retried automatically, so each failed payment needs to be resolved from your dashboard.

Failed GoCardless payments appear under To-Dos ➜ Failed Payments. You can also reach this page from Billing/Revenue ➜ Failed. This guide explains why these payments fail, the actions available to you, and what to tell your customer.

⚠️ Each manual retry of a GoCardless payment counts towards the limit set under Settings ➜ Registrations ➜ Customers ➜ Number of failed payment attempts before a membership is unusable. Once the limit is reached, the customer's membership shows Registrations Blocked.

🔍 Why GoCardless Payments Fail

Knowing the likely cause helps you choose the right action. The reason for a specific failure is shown in your GoCardless dashboard.

Click the arrow to learn more about common failure reasons

Insufficient funds – the most common cause. The customer's bank account didn't have enough money to cover the Direct Debit.
Direct Debit cancelled – the customer or their bank cancelled the Direct Debit instruction, so the mandate is no longer valid.
Bank account closed – the account has been closed since the mandate was set up.
Bank declined the payment – the customer's bank refused the transaction for another reason.

GoCardless begins processing payments 7 days before the billing day, so a payment can still fail or go through after a change you've made inside that window, such as a price change or cancellation.

💡 To see the detailed reason for a failure, log in to your GoCardless dashboard. If you need to contact GoCardless at [email protected], have the Payment ID ready. It starts with PM, for example PM000123456789.

🛠️ How To Resolve a Failed GoCardless Payment

Go to To-Dos ➜ Failed Payments and click Actions next to the payment. Before retrying, check with the customer that the bank account linked to their Direct Debit now has sufficient funds.

Click the arrow to view the available actions

Retry	Reattempts the payment through GoCardless. It can take 3 to 5 business days to confirm the result. If it succeeds, the payment leaves Failed Payments and is marked as paid in your revenue reports. If it fails, it reappears in Failed Payments.
Void	Closes the invoice so it won't be collected. A voided invoice can no longer be paid, and voiding can't be undone. To collect the amount later, add a new ad-hoc payment to the membership.
Cancel membership	Cancels the customer's membership entirely. You can also choose whether to cancel the customer's pending payments.
Change membership's payment method	Switches the membership to a different payment method, such as a card through Stripe, and processes the failed payment with it. Use this when the Direct Debit has been cancelled or the account closed.

You can also resolve the payment from the customer's profile ➜ Memberships tab ➜ click the membership ➜ Resolve next to the failed payment.

💡 A single failed payment doesn't affect the customer's future GoCardless payments. To learn how to add an ad-hoc payment, see the guide here.

🧑‍💻 What Your Customer Can Do

If the Direct Debit was cancelled or the bank account has closed, the customer needs to add new payment details before the payment can be retried.

They can do this from My Account ➜ My Memberships ➜ Change payment method, either by setting up a new Direct Debit or switching to a card. Once their new details are in place, retry the payment from To-Dos ➜ Failed Payments.

💡 To share the customer-facing steps for updating payment details, see the guide here.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Find answers to common questions or additional details that may not be covered in the main instructions.