GoCardless MCP

@GoCardless show me all pending Direct Debit mandates that need customer approval in the last 7 days

Found 12 pending mandates awaiting customer approval. Most recent: Mandate MD0003XYZ for £49.99/month subscription (customer: sarah.chen@example.com, created 2 days ago). Eight mandates are for monthly subscriptions between £15-£120, three are one-off payments, one is an annual £599 charge. All require customer bank authorization via email link before first collection can proceed. No mandates are past the 14-day expiry window yet.

This example assumes the OAuth2 scope includes read access to mandate data. GoCardless mandates expire if not approved within 14 days, so filtering by creation date helps prioritize follow-up. The MCP cannot send approval emails — that happens through GoCardless's own notification system.

@GoCardless create a new payment for customer CUST0004ABC, amount £127.50, description 'Q1 2025 consulting invoice', collect on March 15th

Payment created successfully. Payment ID: PM0009DEF, status: pending_submission. Charge date set for March 15, 2025. This payment will be submitted to the customer's bank on March 12 (3 business days before collection, per Direct Debit rules). Customer will see 'Q1 2025 consulting invoice' on their bank statement. Current mandate status: active, last successful collection was February 3.

Creating payments requires write scope in your OAuth2 configuration. GoCardless enforces a minimum 3-business-day notice period before collection — the MCP will fail if you request same-day or next-day charges. This example assumes the customer already has an active mandate on file.

@GoCardless analyze failed payments from the last 30 days and tell me the top 3 failure reasons with recommended next steps

Analyzed 47 failed payments totaling £8,340. Top failure reason: 'insufficient_funds' (23 payments, 49%). Recommendation: retry these 5-7 days after original attempt when customers typically receive paychecks. Second: 'mandate_cancelled' (11 payments, 23%) — these customers actively revoked authorization; contact them to understand why before re-engaging. Third: 'bank_account_closed' (8 payments, 17%) — request updated payment details immediately. Remaining 5 failures were technical bank errors, already auto-retried by GoCardless.

This synthesis example combines payment history data with the AI's knowledge of Direct Debit best practices. The MCP provides raw failure codes; the AI interprets them into business actions. Note that GoCardless auto-retries some failure types — the analysis should account for payments that may succeed on retry without your intervention.

When GoCardless MCP helps finance teams close the books faster

A 6-person SaaS startup runs monthly close and needs to match GoCardless Direct Debit payments to Stripe invoices. The finance lead spends 4 hours each month exporting CSVs, cross-referencing payment IDs, and flagging failed mandates. GoCardless MCP lets the team query payment status, mandate health, and payout schedules directly in Switchy without leaving the workspace. OAuth2 auth means the CFO controls access without sharing API keys. This works when your payment volume is under 500 transactions per month and you're reconciling in real time. Above that threshold, you'll want a dedicated billing ops tool with automated matching. If your close process is already scripted in Python or you have a data warehouse, the MCP adds friction. But for teams doing manual reconciliation in spreadsheets today, this cuts close time in half.

How support teams resolve failed Direct Debit issues in one conversation

A 12-person B2B company sells annual contracts on Direct Debit. When a customer emails saying their payment failed, the support agent currently pings finance on Slack, waits for a CSV export, then replies 30 minutes later. GoCardless MCP gives the support team read access to mandate status and failure reasons without exposing full billing admin rights. The agent queries the customer's payment history in Switchy, sees the bank rejected the debit due to insufficient funds, and replies with next steps in under 2 minutes. This scenario works if your support team handles fewer than 50 payment inquiries per week. Beyond that volume, you need a proper helpdesk integration with GoCardless webhooks. If your support team already uses Zendesk or Intercom with GoCardless connected, the MCP is redundant. But for small teams using email or basic ticketing, this closes the loop without building custom tooling.

When finance ops needs next-week payout visibility without a BI tool

A 20-person marketplace takes a cut of vendor payouts processed through GoCardless. The finance manager needs to forecast next week's incoming cash to decide whether to delay a vendor payment. Right now, she logs into the GoCardless dashboard daily and manually sums upcoming payouts in a spreadsheet. GoCardless MCP lets her query payout schedules and expected amounts directly in Switchy, then paste the output into the weekly cash flow model. OAuth2 means she doesn't need developer help to set this up. This is the right call if you're forecasting weekly and your payout volume is predictable—under 100 payouts per week. If you're running daily cash flow models or managing multi-currency payouts, you need a proper treasury tool or data pipeline. For teams between spreadsheets and a full FP&A stack, this bridges the gap.