Plend selects GoCardless to introduce variable recurring payments

UK-based lender Plend has chosen GoCardless’ Open Banking feature to offer variable recurring payments (VRPs) to its customers.

Plend will offer VRPs through GoCardless’ ‘Instant Bank Pay’ feature, enabling customers to make changes to their repayment plans, including payment holidays and interest rate freezes.

VRPs will be provided alongside GoCardless direct debit, to give customers more payment choices.

Jamie Pursaill, co-founder and chief technology officer at Plend, said that it is adopting VRPs to make loan repayments “truly tailored to each customer”, as the cost-of-living crisis continues.

“In addition to making the process smoother, our team can use VRPs to be more responsive to customers who are missing payments or in financial difficulty, reaching them faster and, hopefully, coming to a resolution even sooner,” Pursaill said.

“Plus, we can pass on the savings from our efficiency gains to our customers in the form of lower APRs.”

Plend said that VRPs will also reduce the number of manual tasks for its operations team through automation, such as creating new mandates when customers want to change their loan value or repayment period.

Pat Phelan, UK managing director and chief customer officer at GoCardless, added: “We’re proud to support Plend as they broaden financial inclusion through smarter credit decisioning.

“The use of cutting-edge technology to personalise their offering is at the heart of their business model, so it’s no surprise they plan to introduce VRPs to offer greater flexibility for their customers. We can’t wait to see the benefits of VRPs come to life through this use case.”

Last year, GoCardless became one of three payment providers, alongside TrueLayer and Cazoo, to sign agreements with NatWest to begin offering VRPs.

NatWest was the first UK bank to initiate VRPs for non-sweeping use cases, going beyond the Competition and Markets Authority’s mandate.

Non-sweeping VRP payments were made by NatWest customers to Charity Right, an international charity, supported by Charity Right’s integration with GoCardless.