GoCardless Python API Docs | dltHub

GoCardless is a payments platform that lets businesses collect bank‑to‑bank payments (Direct Debit and bank payments) via a REST API. The REST API base URL is https://api.gocardless.com/ (live) and https://api-sandbox.gocardless.com/ (sandbox) and all requests require a Bearer token for authentication (or OAuth access tokens for third‑party integrations).

dlt is an open-source Python library that handles authentication, pagination, and schema evolution automatically. dlthub provides AI context files that enable code assistants to generate production-ready pipelines. Install with uv pip install "dlt[workspace]" and start loading GoCardless data in under 10 minutes.

---

What data can I load from GoCardless?

Here are some of the endpoints you can load from GoCardless:

---

How do I authenticate with the GoCardless API?

API requests must include an Authorization header with a bearer access token, e.g. Authorization: Bearer YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN. Requests should also send Accept: application/json and for POST/PUT include Content-Type: application/json (or application/vnd.api+json).

1. Get your credentials

1. Sign in to your GoCardless dashboard (or sandbox dashboard).\n2) For server‑to‑server access, navigate to Settings → Developers → API keys and create a personal access token.\n3) For OAuth, go to Developers → OAuth apps, register a new app and follow the authorize‑code flow to exchange the code for an access_token.\n4) Store the returned access_token securely and use it in the Authorization header of API calls.

2. Add them to .dlt/secrets.toml

Copy
[sources.go_cardless_source]
access_token = "live_xxx_your_token_here"

dlt reads this automatically at runtime — never hardcode tokens in your pipeline script. For production environments, see setting up credentials with dlt for environment variable and vault-based options.

---

How do I set up and run the pipeline?

Set up a virtual environment and install dlt:

Copy
uv venv && source .venv/bin/activate
uv pip install "dlt[workspace]"

1. Install the dlt AI Workbench:

Copy
dlt ai init --agent <your-agent> # <agent>: claude | cursor | codex

This installs project rules, a secrets management skill, appropriate ignore files, and configures the dlt MCP server for your agent. Learn more →

2. Install the rest-api-pipeline toolkit:

Copy
dlt ai toolkit rest-api-pipeline install

This loads the skills and context about dlt the agent uses to build the pipeline iteratively, efficiently, and safely. The agent uses MCP tools to inspect credentials — it never needs to read your secrets.toml directly. Learn more →

3. Start LLM-assisted coding:

Use /find-source to load data from the GoCardless API into DuckDB.

The rest-api-pipeline toolkit takes over from here — it reads relevant API documentation, presents you with options for which endpoints to load, and follows a structured workflow to scaffold, debug, and validate the pipeline step by step.

4. Run the pipeline:

Copy
python go_cardless_pipeline.py

If everything is configured correctly, you'll see output like this:

Copy
Pipeline go_cardless_pipeline load step completed in 0.26 seconds
1 load package(s) were loaded to destination duckdb and into dataset go_cardless_data
The duckdb destination used duckdb:/go_cardless.duckdb location to store data
Load package 1749667187.541553 is LOADED and contains no failed jobs

Inspect your pipeline and data:

Copy
dlt pipeline go_cardless_pipeline show

This opens the Pipeline Dashboard where you can verify pipeline state, load metrics, schema (tables, columns, types), and query the loaded data directly.

---

Python pipeline example

This example loads payments and customers from the GoCardless API into DuckDB. It mirrors the endpoint and data selector configuration from the table above:

Copy
import dlt
from dlt.sources.rest_api import RESTAPIConfig, rest_api_resources

@dlt.source
def go_cardless_source(access_token=dlt.secrets.value):
    config: RESTAPIConfig = {
        "client": {
            "base_url": "https://api.gocardless.com/ (live) and https://api-sandbox.gocardless.com/ (sandbox)",
            "auth": {
                "type": "bearer",
                "access_token": access_token,
            },
        },
        "resources": [
            {"name": "payments", "endpoint": {"path": "payments", "data_selector": "payments"}},
            {"name": "customers", "endpoint": {"path": "customers", "data_selector": "customers"}}
        ],
    }
    yield from rest_api_resources(config)


def get_data() -> None:
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="go_cardless_pipeline",
        destination="duckdb",
        dataset_name="go_cardless_data",
    )
    load_info = pipeline.run(go_cardless_source())
    print(load_info)

To add more endpoints, append entries from the resource table to the "resources" list using the same name, path, and data_selector pattern.

---

How do I query the loaded data?

Once the pipeline runs, dlt creates one table per resource. You can query with Python or SQL.

Python (pandas DataFrame):

Copy
import dlt

data = dlt.pipeline("go_cardless_pipeline").dataset()
sessions_df = data.payments.df()
print(sessions_df.head())

SQL (DuckDB example):

Copy
SELECT * FROM go_cardless_data.payments LIMIT 10;

In a marimo or Jupyter notebook:

Copy
import dlt

data = dlt.pipeline("go_cardless_pipeline").dataset()
data.payments.df().head()

See how to explore your data in marimo Notebooks and how to query your data in Python with dataset.

---

What destinations can I load GoCardless data to?

dlt supports loading into any of these destinations — only the destination parameter changes:

Change the destination in dlt.pipeline(destination="snowflake") and add credentials in .dlt/secrets.toml. See the full destinations list.

---

Troubleshooting

Authentication failures

If you receive 401 Unauthorized, check that the Authorization header is present: Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN. Inspect error.reason for values such as access_token_not_found, access_token_revoked or access_token_not_active. Ensure OAuth scopes include required permissions.

Rate limits

The API returns 429 Too Many Requests when rate limits are exceeded. Examine response headers for reset/time‑window details and implement exponential backoff and retry logic.

Pagination

GoCardless uses cursor pagination. List responses include a plural resource array (e.g., "payments") and a meta object with cursors (after and before). Use the after cursor to fetch the next page: GET /payments?after=CURSOR.

Ensure that the API key is valid to avoid 401 Unauthorized errors. Also, verify endpoint paths and parameters to avoid 404 Not Found errors.

---

Next steps

Continue your data engineering journey with the other toolkits of the dltHub AI Workbench:

• data-exploration — Build custom notebooks, charts, and dashboards for deeper analysis with marimo notebooks.
• dlthub-runtime — Deploy, schedule, and monitor your pipeline in production.

Copy
dlt ai toolkit data-exploration install
dlt ai toolkit dlthub-runtime install

• How to deploy a pipeline
• How to explore your data in marimo Notebooks
• How to query your data in Python with dataset
• Join the dlt community on Slack