Best Payment APIs for UK Ecommerce: Stripe, GoCardless, PayPal and Revolut

Payment integration is the most consequential API decision an ecommerce business makes. The right payment stack reduces checkout abandonment, lowers transaction costs, automates collection and reconciliation, and scales without friction. The wrong one creates unnecessary fees, missed payment scenarios and reconciliation headaches. This guide covers the four most relevant payment APIs for UK ecommerce — Stripe, GoCardless, PayPal and Revolut — what each does best, what it costs, and how to build the right payment stack for your business model.

Stripe API

Stripe is the default choice for online card payment processing in the UK. It covers one-time card payments, subscription billing, marketplace payments, fraud prevention and financial services in a single, exceptionally well-documented API. The developer experience is widely considered the best in the payments industry — consistent API design, clear error messages, comprehensive sandbox testing and excellent tooling including a CLI for local webhook testing.

Stripe’s UK pricing for standard card payments is 1.5% + 20p for European cards, 2.9% + 30p for non-European cards. Stripe Billing for subscriptions adds an additional 0.5% on revenue managed through Billing. No monthly fees on the standard plan.

Stripe supports 3D Secure authentication automatically through its Payment Element — when a card requires 3DS, the customer completes it within the Stripe checkout flow without any redirect. Stripe Radar provides machine-learning fraud detection included in the standard pricing. Stripe Connect handles marketplace payments where multiple parties receive a share of each transaction.

Stripe webhooks are the mechanism for receiving payment events in real time: payment confirmed, payment failed, subscription renewed, dispute opened. A well-built Stripe integration handles all relevant webhook events, verifies webhook signatures, and takes appropriate actions in your system on each event.

Best for: any UK ecommerce business taking card payments; SaaS and subscription businesses using Stripe Billing; marketplace platforms using Stripe Connect; businesses wanting the best developer tooling and documentation.

Integration complexity: straightforward. The best-documented payment API available. Build time for a complete Stripe integration including webhooks and subscription handling is typically one to two weeks.

GoCardless API

GoCardless is the leading Direct Debit API for the UK. Where Stripe takes card payments, GoCardless collects via Direct Debit — a fundamentally different payment mechanism that pulls money directly from a customer’s bank account on a schedule. Direct Debit is not a card network and doesn’t involve Visa or Mastercard. Payment authorisation is established once (via a Direct Debit mandate), and subsequent collections are automatic.

GoCardless charges 1% per transaction capped at £2, plus a monthly platform fee depending on the plan. For subscription businesses collecting regular fixed amounts, Direct Debit is typically cheaper per transaction than card payments at higher volumes — a £50 monthly subscription payment costs 50p via GoCardless rather than 95p via Stripe. The difference compounds significantly at scale.

GoCardless handles Bacs Direct Debit (standard UK Direct Debit, 3 working day processing), Faster Payments (near-instant bank-to-bank transfers), and SEPA Direct Debit for European collections. The GoCardless API covers mandate creation, payment collection, payment status webhooks, retry logic for failed payments and variable payment amounts — important for usage-based billing where the amount changes each period.

Direct Debit has lower fraud risk than card payments — the bank account holder authorises the mandate explicitly, and the Bacs guarantee gives customers the right to reverse any payment they dispute. This makes Direct Debit appropriate for high-value subscription payments where card fraud is a concern.

Best for: subscription businesses where customers pay regular amounts; B2B businesses collecting invoices where Direct Debit is the preferred payment method; any business wanting to reduce card payment processing costs at volume; utilities, membership organisations, SaaS with annual plans.

Integration complexity: moderate. GoCardless’s API is well-documented and straightforward. The mandate setup flow requires careful UX design — the customer must be clearly informed they’re authorising a Direct Debit. Webhook handling covers all payment lifecycle states.

PayPal API

PayPal has a trust advantage with certain UK demographics that no other payment method matches. Customers who have been using PayPal for twenty years as their default online payment method specifically look for the PayPal button and trust it more than entering card details on an unfamiliar site. For ecommerce businesses where a meaningful segment of customers fits this profile, offering PayPal alongside card payments typically increases checkout conversion.

PayPal’s API covers three distinct use cases: checkout (accepting payments from customers), Payouts (paying sellers, affiliates or contractors programmatically) and Subscriptions (recurring billing via PayPal Billing Plans). Each uses different API endpoints.

PayPal’s fee structure is higher than Stripe for card payments: approximately 2.99% + 49p per transaction versus Stripe’s 1.5% + 20p for European cards. PayPal Payouts charges 2% capped at £1 per transaction. For businesses primarily needing card payment acceptance, PayPal is not the cheapest option — its value is the checkout conversion benefit for PayPal-preferring customers, not the fee structure.

PayPal’s developer documentation is less consistent than Stripe’s, and PayPal integrations typically take 20–40% longer to build for equivalent functionality. The sandbox can behave differently from production, and some edge cases require additional defensive handling.

Best for: ecommerce businesses with a demographic that specifically prefers PayPal; marketplace platforms paying sellers who use PayPal; affiliate and contractor platforms where recipients want PayPal; businesses adding PayPal as a secondary option alongside Stripe.

Integration complexity: moderate to higher. More complex than Stripe for equivalent functionality. Payouts requires separate production approval from PayPal.

Revolut Business API

Revolut’s Business API is not a payment acceptance tool — it’s a payment automation tool. It automates outgoing payments from a Revolut Business account: paying customers, contractors, suppliers or trade-in sellers programmatically without anyone logging into the Revolut dashboard. The key constraint is that it only works if the business already banks with Revolut Business — the API provides access to your own Revolut account, not a payment gateway.

For businesses that need to pay people out — buyback platforms paying customers for trade-ins, affiliate platforms paying commission, contractor platforms paying earnings — the Revolut API sends payments to any UK bank account directly. Unlike PayPal Payouts, which requires the recipient to have a PayPal account, Revolut pays to sort code and account number. UK bank transfer payments via Revolut Business are typically included in the business plan rather than charged per transaction.

Because automated payments from a bank account carry real financial risk, a Revolut integration requires specific safeguards: OTP verification before payment release, bank account name matching against the account holder registered at the destination bank, sort code and account number modulus checking, payment limits, duplicate detection and a full audit log. These are non-negotiable in any production Revolut integration.

Best for: businesses that bank with Revolut Business and need to automate outgoing payments to customers, contractors or sellers; buyback and trade-in platforms paying customers for items received; affiliate platforms paying commission; contractor and gig economy platforms paying earnings.

Integration complexity: highest of the four. OAuth 2.0 with RSA key pair. Real financial risk requires comprehensive safeguards. Timeline approximately two weeks for the payments automation tier.

Building the right payment stack

Most UK ecommerce businesses need more than one payment integration. A common effective stack: Stripe for card payments (primary), GoCardless for subscription or repeat customers who prefer Direct Debit (lower cost at volume), and PayPal as a secondary checkout option for PayPal-preferring customers. Revolut sits outside this stack entirely — it’s for businesses needing to pay out, not take payments.

The wrong approach is trying to find one payment provider that does everything. Stripe and GoCardless serve different payment mechanisms and different customer preferences. Using both from the same platform — with the checkout offering card (Stripe), bank transfer (GoCardless) and PayPal as options — removes the constraint of a single payment method and captures more customers at checkout.

For Stripe integration, see the Stripe API integration service. For GoCardless, see the GoCardless API integration service. For PayPal, see the PayPal API integration service. For Revolut, see the Revolut Business API integration service. For the PayPal vs Stripe comparison, see PayPal vs Stripe.

If you need help with a custom API integration for your website or business application, I can help. I build bespoke API integrations for UK businesses. See API integration pricing or get in touch to discuss your project.

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