Card vs Direct Debit Savings Calculator

What does the calculator work out?

The calculator turns your payer base and payment values into a like-for-like cost comparison, then projects it over five years. Enter your figures in the tool above and it returns three numbers plus an honest verdict.

• Annual fee saving. The difference between what you pay today (card fees or bureau fees) and the cost of the same collections by Direct Debit.
• Churn-recovery value (card mode). The revenue you retain each year by removing the involuntary churn that expired and reissued cards cause.
• Five-year saving after migration. The combined saving over five years, with any one-off migration cost netted off, shown as a cumulative chart with a break-even point.

How is it calculated?

The model is deliberately simple and fully visible, so you can check every step. Nothing is hidden behind a black box.

1. Volume. Collections a year equals your payer count multiplied by collections per payer (from the frequency you choose). Billed revenue is payers multiplied by average payment value multiplied by collections per payer.
2. Current cost. In card mode, this is your card fee percentage applied to billed revenue. In bureau mode, it is your bureau’s per-transaction fee multiplied by collections a year.
3. Direct Debit cost. Collections a year multiplied by the Direct Debit cost per collection, which you can edit to match your route.
4. Fee saving. Current cost minus Direct Debit cost.
5. Churn recovery (card mode only). The payers you lose to involuntary churn each year, multiplied by their annual value, multiplied by a conservative recovery factor of one half. Payers lost part-way through a year lose, on average, about half a year of revenue, so removing that churn recovers roughly that much.
6. Five-year figure. The annual saving multiplied by five, less any migration cost. The projection is linear; in reality the churn saving compounds, so the figure is generous to the status quo.

Why model involuntary churn at all?

Because for recurring revenue it is usually the bigger prize, and most calculators ignore it. A pure fee calculator compares processing rates and stops there, which understates the case for Direct Debit, sometimes badly.

Cards expire, typically every three years, and are reissued after loss or fraud. Each event silently cancels a paying customer who never chose to leave. Direct Debit has no card to expire, so a live mandate keeps collecting, and capturing the value of that retained revenue often turns a marginal-looking switch into a clearly worthwhile one.

What the result does not include

An honest tool is clear about its limits. This calculator is a directional estimate to help you decide whether a deeper look is worthwhile, not a final business case.

• It uses illustrative default rates. Replace them with your real figures, because card, Direct Debit, and bureau pricing all vary by provider and volume.
• It does not model the fixed costs of a particular collection route, such as sponsorship or software. Fold those into the migration figure or the per-collection cost if they are material.
• It assumes your current costs stay flat, which is usually generous to the status quo given typical annual fee increases.

What should you do with your result?

If the calculator points to a saving worth pursuing, the next question is not really about Bacs; it is about the system that will run your collections reliably. Read switching from card billing to Direct Debit for the full decision, or, if you are leaving a bureau, the routes to direct submission.

When you are ready to test the numbers against reality, book a consultation. We will work through your real figures line by line, pressure-test the churn and migration assumptions, and show you how the Billing Engine makes the switch dependable at scale.