Mollie launches Pay by Bank in the UK and Netherlands through GoCardless connectivity

Mollie, the Amsterdam-based payments company, launched Pay by Bank in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands on October 9, 2026, adding direct bank payments to the checkout and payment-method stack it offers merchants. The product uses GoCardless connectivity so a customer can authorize a payment from a bank account without entering card details, giving merchants another route for collecting both one-off purchases and recurring payments.

The launch places Mollie in a part of payments where the commercial logic is straightforward: bank payments can be less dependent on card interchange and card-expiry events, while recurring-payment businesses may benefit from a payment method that does not require customers to update a card when it expires. The trade-off is that the customer must recognize and trust the bank-authorization flow, and the payment experience depends on whether the customer’s bank and account are supported in the relevant market.

The initial rollout in the UK and Netherlands also reflects the different maturity of account-to-account payments across Europe. Both markets have well-established online banking usage and direct-debit infrastructure, but Pay by Bank is not the same as a direct debit: it generally asks the customer to authorize a specific payment in the moment, while direct debit relies on a mandate for future collections. That distinction can make Pay by Bank feel more immediate while leaving merchants to consider which method best fits their billing relationship with a customer.

Mollie has not published transaction volumes from the launch or a forecast for how much checkout share it expects Pay by Bank to capture. For now, the event is best understood as a distribution move: GoCardless supplies connectivity to bank accounts, while Mollie puts the capability inside a broader merchant-acquiring and checkout relationship. Whether the combination changes payment mix will depend less on the existence of the button than on conversion rates, refund handling, settlement timing and the number of customers willing to authorize a bank payment at checkout.