We spend a lot of time reviewing new software.

Rather than introducing new software to clients straight away, we prefer to test them ourselves first and see how they perform in real life.

A few become part of our core stack. Others look brilliant in a demo and less brilliant when real businesses and real processes get involved.

We’re currently trialling Adfin for payment collection. This isn’t a recommendation (yet). But enough things made us curious that we wanted to explore it.

We’re not just reviewing it. We’re actually using it.

There’s a difference between watching a demo and putting something into your own business.

As part of our trial, we’re moving our own payment collection from GoCardless across to Adfin and using it with real payments rather than test scenarios.

It means that if there are frustrations, awkward workarounds or things that simply don’t work properly, we’ll experience them before clients do.

Why we’re exploring a GoCardless alternative

We’ve used GoCardless for years. Our oldest live mandate is from 2014!.

And to be fair, it does the main job well. An invoice is raised, client pays by direct debit, cash lands in the bank, and Xero is updated.

Infact, our debtor days currently sit at just 3 days and GoCardless has played a big role in that.

So we weren’t actively looking to switch. Then we met the founders of Adfin at Finance Takes the Piste 2025 (and re-reading that blog, it’s fair to say we were making enthusiastic use of Chat GPT at that time 😳).

We became curious. Just because software was great 10 years ago, it doesn’t remain great today. There is an expectation, arguably a requirement, that software evolves as the world around it changes.

A few things have made us consider the switch to Adfin.

• The GoCardless interface hasn’t evolved a much since the Xero integration launched around 2017.
• Pricing seems less competitive than it used to
• We haven’t seen the same pace of visible product development recently
• Increasingly we’re interested in tools that connect payment collection into wider finance workflows

So now feels like the right time to explore alternatives to GoCardless.

One-off payments need consideration too

Historically we’ve often recommended Crezco where businesses wanted a simple and cost-effective way to collect one-off payments.

Recently, however, their pricing changed as they introduced a monthly subscription. That prompted us to revisit the wider payment landscape.

Adfin allows one-off payment collection alongside direct debits, potentially removing the need for separate tools.

Less software means fewer subscriptions and simpler processes. We’re generally in favour of that so long as it doesn’t mean compromising on product quality.

What caught our attention with Adfin

A few things stood out straight away.

No fees on payment retries

GoCardless charges when payments retry. Adfin currently doesn’t.

We have clients that suffer a high number of payment fails and have had to switch off GoCardless as the small cost of repeated hundreds of times quickly becomes not-so-small costs over large volumes.

Potentially lower fees

Depending on referral discounts, there may be fee savings available. Although if I’m honest, lower fees actually weren’t a big driver for us. 

GoCardless has helped us keep our debtor days low and our cashflow predictable for years. Our debtor days stand at 3 days today. Paying a little more for software that gives peace of mind is money well spent.

Automatic retries and card fallback

Adfin appears to have functionality around automatic retries and card fallback options that could potentially improve collection rates and reduce admin.

Less chasing is generally good.

There seems to be more coming

What interested us wasn’t just direct debits.

Adfin also appears to be developing wider functionality around areas like automated credit control.

If those features develop well, they could eventually make it more than just a payment collection tool.

Particularly with pricing increases from tools like Chaser causing some businesses to reassess costs, it’ll be interesting to see how this develops.

Why we aren’t recommending it yet

We always test new software ourselves before suggesting clients move. We want to make sure it works and that it is better than what they are currently using. 

And we want to know how to use it well enough so we can confidently help clients with any questions they have.

Curious?

If you want to take a look yourself, we’ve got this referral link that gives reduced fees to both you and us.

We’ll share a proper verdict once we’ve run our own payment collection through it for long enough to know whether it’s genuinely better than the GoCardless and Crezco combination we are currently recommending.