GoCardless Bank Account Data by GoCardless

# Fix list: GoCardless Bank Account Data

From Anchor Terminal's listing at https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/gocardless-bank-account-data, the October 2026 research run, assessed 1 October 2026. Grade E, 41.9 out of 100.

This is everything the published grade says the listing lacks, the biggest possible gain to the total first. It comes from the reason given for each score, the checklist each category was scored against (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist), the provenance checks, the deductions, what we couldn't check and what the review panel asked for. A fix counts at the next check, once it's public.

For a coding agent working on GoCardless Bank Account Data: work through the items below in the product, its docs and its public pages. Each category gives the reason for its score, with the points each checklist item earned, and the checklist itself, so the gap is the items that earned less than their points. Change the product, not the wording, and keep a note of what you changed and where it's published.

## 1. Payments & pricing, 10 out of 100, up to 11.3 more on the total

Why it scored 10: No x402, MPP or L402 (0). No published price; gocardless.com/pricing covers Direct Debit only (0). The sandbox institution SANDBOXFINANCE_SFIN0000 is free and the quickstart sends new users to manage-sandbox.gocardless.com/sign-up, with no card mentioned; the overview says new accounts start non-verified and verification comes with a paid plan, and the Nordigen free plan isn't mentioned (10 of 20). A person signs up in a browser (0).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-payments):

The published rubric, also on the [x402 page](https://www.anchorterminal.com/x402/).

- 40, a machine payment protocol (x402, MPP or L402) on the tool's own endpoints. 10 to 30 when it covers only some endpoints or only goes through a third party, and the note says which.
- 20, per-call or per-unit pricing published without a login. 10 for public plan-only pricing, 0 for "contact sales" or prices behind a login.
- 20, a free tier or trial that doesn't need a card.
- 20, autonomous onboarding, meaning an agent can get access without a person signing up in a browser (keyless use, x402, a programmatic key API).

Payment platforms and agent wallets rarely charge for their own API over a machine protocol, so the first line has steps for them, and the highest one that applies counts. 40 when x402, MPP or L402 runs on all their own endpoints, 30 when it runs on part of their own API, 25 when their merchants can accept one, 20 for running a facilitator, 15 for paying as a buyer, and 0 when the only protocol is their own. Merchant acceptance sits above a facilitator because the platform's own customers can charge agents through it, while a facilitator settles for sellers who wire up the protocol themselves. The counter-argument (a facilitator does more for the protocol as a whole) has a point. Each note says which step applied.

Open-source software you run yourself is scored on its hosted or paid option if it has one. A free, self-hosted package with nothing to buy gets 20, 20 and 20 for the last three lines, and 0 to 40 for the first only if it ships a payment protocol.

## 2. Reliability, 44 out of 100, up to 11.2 more on the total

Why it scored 44: GoCardless runs a Statuspage at gocardless-status.com, but none of its components covers Bank Account Data (5 of 20). The incident feed runs from 3 February 2025 with 20 incidents and none mentions Bank Account Data, Nordigen, account information or requisitions, so there's no readable history for this product (5). Every response carries rate limit headers with limit, remaining and reset, per client and per account, and the docs say banks cap some accounts at 4 calls a day; the numbers live in headers more than in the docs (12 of 15). A 429 RateLimitError comes with the account reset header saying how long to wait, and the docs say to poll an account until READY; the API is read only, so retries don't double-write (12 of 15). No SLA found (0). Generally available (10).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-reliability):

Hosted APIs, MCP servers, models and platforms.

- 20, a public status page with component history (Statuspage, Instatus, BetterStack or the vendor's own).
- 0 to 30, the incident record for the last 90 days on that page. 30 for a clean record or trivial incidents only, 20 for minor incidents only, 10 for one major outage (an hour or more of a core API down, or errors across the board), 0 for several. 5 when there's no history we could read, and the note says so.
- 15, rate limits documented with numbers.
- 15, documented 429 or overload handling (Retry-After, backoff guidance), and idempotency keys or safe-retry guidance where writes are involved.
- 10, an SLA published for any paid tier.
- 10, the surface agents use is generally available, not beta or preview.

Local packages, SDKs, frameworks and stdio MCP servers.

- 20, installs from an official package with supported runtimes stated.
- 25, a public CI and test suite, passing on the default branch.
- 0 to 25, open crash or regression issues relative to activity (25 for few and handled, 0 for many, old and unanswered).
- 15, semver discipline and breaking changes called out in a changelog.
- 15, version 1.0 or later, or declared stable.

Protocols are read from their reference implementations, the public facilitators or servers, spec stability and test vectors.

## 3. Security & auth, 50 out of 100, up to 8.8 more on the total

Why it scored 50: A secret_id and secret_key pair from the portal exchanges for a 24-hour access JWT and a 30-day refresh token; no scopes on the developer credential (20 of 30). The API can only read, and each end user agreement limits access_scope to balances, details or transactions and caps history and access days; requisitions can be deleted (15 of 20). Returns bank records with merchant-written descriptions; no guidance on treating them as untrusted (7 of 15). Audit or request logs not found, as the portal blocks crawlers (0 of 15). gocardless.com security.txt names vuln-disc@gocardless.com and a policy but has no Expires field per the 30 September check; no bug bounty or certification found on the pages we read (8 of 20).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-security):

- 0 to 30, the credential model. 30 for OAuth 2.1 with scopes, or scoped and revocable keys with rotation. 20 for plain revocable API keys. 10 for one all-powerful key. 10 off when a secret can travel in a URL query string as a documented option.
- 0 to 20, read-only or least-privilege modes, and confirmation or approval for destructive actions.
- 0 to 15, prompt-injection posture where the tool returns untrusted content (documented mitigations or guidance). A tool that returns no untrusted content gets 10.
- 0 to 15, audit logs or per-call visibility for the operator.
- 0 to 20, a security programme. security.txt or a disclosure policy, a bug bounty, SOC 2 or ISO 27001, advisories handled in public.

Models are read for retention, whether API data trains models (and whether that's off by default), zero-retention options and certifications. Frameworks for telemetry defaults, approval hooks, guardrails and sandboxing.

## 4. Maintenance & community, 3 out of 100, up to 8.5 more on the total

Why it scored 3: No changelog and no dated API change found; the last dated public change is the April 2025 notice that the client libraries are no longer maintained (0). No releases or dated entries in the last 90 days (0). Closed service with no public changelog; support goes through GoCardless (3 of 15). Official SDKs unsupported since 7 April 2025 (0). nordigen-node's last tag is v1.1.1 from 11 August 2022 (0).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-maintenance):

- 0 to 30, time since the last release, or the last published model or API change for a closed service. 30 within 30 days, 20 within 90, 10 within 180, 0 older.
- 20, at least three releases or dated changelog entries in the last 90 days.
- 0 to 25, responsiveness. Issues and pull requests answered on GitHub (the open issues and how recent the replies are). For closed services, a public changelog and a support or community channel that answers, 0 to 15.
- 15, presence in the official MCP registry under a verified namespace (MCP servers), or current official SDKs (APIs and models).
- 10, package health, current dependencies and CI.

Models are read for deprecation notice periods and model churn rather than release counts.

## 5. Schema & documentation, 54 out of 100, up to 7.5 more on the total

Why it scored 54: No public OpenAPI file for this API. docs.gocardless.com/openapi-schema-public.json covers the payments API at api.gocardless.com, the portal's Swagger UI is blocked to crawlers, and there's a Postman collection (8 of 25). docs.gocardless.com/llms.txt exists and lists nine Bank Account Data pages; the listing had none (10). The quickstart and output pages explain each step and field (12 of 20). Input constraints aren't checkable without a spec; the agreement fields and defaults are documented (7 of 15). A statuses and error codes page gives the summary, detail and status_code body and the causes per HTTP status, and the quickstart has request examples (12 of 15). Versioned by path (/api/v2) with no changelog found (5 of 15).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-schema):

APIs and MCP servers.

- 25, a machine-readable contract (a public OpenAPI file or similar; for MCP, typed JSON Schema inputs on every tool).
- 10, llms.txt or Markdown docs served for agents.
- 0 to 20, descriptions that say what a tool is for, when to use it and when not to, read from the tool definitions in the source or the API reference.
- 0 to 15, typed inputs with enums, constraints and required fields, and no free-form JSON blobs.
- 0 to 15, examples and documented error responses.
- 15, versioning and a public changelog.

Models are read from the API reference, the OpenAPI file, llms.txt, the structured-output and tool-use docs and the model cards. Frameworks from docs a model can follow, typed interfaces, examples and the API reference.

## 6. Agent ergonomics, 57 out of 100, up to 7 more on the total

Why it scored 57: Responses are small JSON objects per account, split into balances, details and transactions; date filters on transactions weren't confirmed on the pages we read (12 of 25). Institutions filter by country; no transaction pagination found (10 of 20). Errors carry summary, detail and status_code, and the docs list each cause by status code and say to use the status for control flow (16 of 20). Read-only calls are safe to repeat; creating a requisition isn't idempotent (12 of 20). The agreement step is optional with 90-day defaults, but the official SDKs have been unsupported since April 2025 (7 of 15).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-ergonomics):

- 0 to 25, context cost. For MCP, the number and size of the tool definitions (25 for ten or fewer compact tools, 15 for 11 to 30, 5 for more than 30, plus up to 10 back for toolsets, dynamic loading or read-only subsets). For APIs, whether responses can be sized (field selection, limits, summaries).
- 20, pagination, filtering and output-size controls.
- 20, actionable, documented error responses, codes and messages an agent can recover from.
- 20, idempotency or safe retries, and for MCP the `readOnlyHint` and `destructiveHint` annotations.
- 15, sensible defaults, few required parameters, and official SDKs in at least two languages.

Models are read for tool use, structured output, prompt caching, context length, batch and SDKs. Frameworks for how much code and how many defaults a tool-calling agent with MCP needs.

## 7. Transparency & trust, 55 out of 100, up to 3.9 more on the total

Made of editorial 30, provenance 80.

Why it scored 55: Closed service. The Bank Account Data Service Terms PDF linked from the merchant terms returned 404 in the 30 September check, so the product terms aren't readable (10 of 30). The account holders privacy notice, updated 28 July 2026, names GoCardless Ltd as controller but gives no retention periods or processors on the page (10 of 30). The SDK end-of-maintenance notice is public but undated as to sunset, and there's no deprecation policy (5 of 20). No subprocessor list or data location statement found (0). Regulatory standing counts here as an addition to the checklist (+5 for a named regulator with a register number, +3 for a named regulator alone). GoCardless Ltd is FCA-registered under 597190, per the 30 September check (+5).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-transparency):

- 0 to 30, source availability and licence clarity. 30 for open source under an OSI licence, 15 for closed with clear terms, 0 for unclear terms.
- 0 to 30, data handling and retention statements that agree with each other (privacy policy, DPA, retention periods, subprocessors).
- 0 to 20, a deprecation policy or notices with dates.
- 0 to 20, telemetry disclosed with an opt-out (local software), or subprocessors and data locations disclosed (hosted).

The other half of Transparency and trust is the provenance score, computed from checked facts (below). The category score is the mean of the two.

Provenance checks not met in full (half of this category, computed from checked facts):

- Changelog: not found (0 of 10)
- security.txt: could not be fetched (0 of 10)

## What we couldn't check

What we couldn't read counted as absent. Publishing it on a page a plain HTTP fetch can read (not only in a browser) lets the next check count it.

- unchecked: the portal at bankaccountdata.gocardless.com (sign-up terms, Swagger UI, request logs) blocks crawlers
- Whether new production sign-ups are open on a self-serve basis or only through sales
- Whether GoCardless still ships changes to this API; we found no dated entry after April 2025
- unchecked: product-specific retention periods and subprocessors

## Weaknesses

- No public price and no confirmed free plan
- Official SDKs unmaintained since April 2025, and no changelog
- No public OpenAPI file for this API; the portal's Swagger UI blocks crawlers
- The GoCardless status page has no Bank Account Data component and no incidents for it since February 2025
- Product service terms PDF returned 404 and no subprocessor list was found

## What costs an agent a turn today

The notes we give agents before they call it. Each one is a workaround an agent shouldn't need.

- Cache the access token for its 24 hours and use /api/v2/token/refresh/ rather than minting a new pair each run
- Create the end user agreement before the requisition when you need other than 90 days of history or access
- Read the per-account rate limit headers; on 429 wait for the account reset time, since some banks allow 4 calls a day
- Poll /api/v2/accounts/{id}/ until status is READY before asking for transactions
- Call the REST endpoints directly; the Nordigen SDKs still install but get no fixes

## What the review panel asked for

- a changelog for this api
- a status page component
- Expires field in security.txt
- scopes on developer secrets

## When it's done

Send what changed and where it's published as a dispute (https://www.anchorterminal.com/builders/#disputes, or `POST https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/contact` with `"kind": "dispute"`). Disputes are answered in public, and the listing is checked again by the same checklist. Paying for an audit or a listing claim changes nothing here.