Direct Debit turns membership income into revenue you can forecast, but only if collection is built into the same system that holds your memberships.
Most clubs don't have an income problem. They have a collection problem. The members are there, the memberships are sold, and somewhere between the sign-up form and the bank account a chunk of it goes missing: a card that expired, a payment that bounced in January, a member who left in March that nobody switched off.
Direct Debit fixes most of that. But it only fixes it properly when collection is built into the same system that holds your memberships, rather than bolted on beside it.
What integration actually changes
A member joins on your website or at reception, sets up the mandate themselves on their phone, and the first collection is scheduled without anyone typing anything into a second system. When they upgrade, freeze or cancel, the collection changes with them.
Run separately, a Direct Debit bureau leaves you with two sets of records to reconcile every month, and every discrepancy is a job for someone. Integrated, the admin doesn't get faster. It stops existing. That is the difference worth paying for, and it is why membership records and collection belong in one place.
The question that decides whether it's worth it
Ask any provider one thing: is the fee a flat amount per collection, or a percentage of what you collect? A percentage means every member you add and every price rise you earn costs you more. You end up paying your software provider for your own growth.
ClubRight charges one low, flat fee of 40–45p per Direct Debit collection. The same whether the member pays £25 or £250. There is no fee when a payment fails, when you amend one, or when you cancel one. Card payments are 1.85% + 20p.
Failed payments are where the money actually goes
Every club loses some collections. That is normal. What separates clubs that grow from clubs that leak is what happens next.
ClubRight retries a failed collection automatically, chases the member by email, SMS and push notification, and flags it to you when someone cancels a mandate at their bank, the one a club usually discovers three months and three missed payments later. Across clubs on the platform that recovers more than £1.25m a year which would otherwise have been written off, or chased by hand on a Sunday evening.
Two details worth checking before you sign
Whose name appears on the member's bank statement? It should be your club's, not your software provider's. Members query charges they don't recognise, and every query is a phone call you have to take.
And how long does settlement take? With ClubRight, Direct Debit funds route through the FCA-regulated payment processor and reach your own business account in around four working days. Card payouts run on a schedule you choose, from three working days.
Moving your existing collections
The thing that stops most owners isn't the fees. It's the mandates. What happens to the members who are already paying?
In practice this is a well-worn process. More than 150,000 members have been moved onto ClubRight, migration is handled for you and included, and there is no setup fee and no contract at the other end. Members don't re-sign anything and collections carry on.
The full fee list, the retry rules and what your members see are all set out on the ClubRight Pay page. If you're weighing up a move from an existing provider, the switching guide covers what the first month looks like.
