In any case, this looks like a useful service with or without card processing, and the more "instant" payment alternatives there are to paypal, the better. Also +1 for some innovation on this side of the pond.
We currently accept UK bank-to-bank payments - customers enter their account number and sort code on the checkout page. We'll work on making this clearer on our landing page - thanks for the feedback. We'll be rolling out across Europe in the next few months.
GoCardless is particularly good for subscriptions & regular variable payments, as we're based on the UK direct debit network.
What additional checks do you undertake to ensure that the person using the service to make a payment is the owner of the bank account in question?
(I'm not saying Credit Cards are perfect, but they do allow for a lot of additional information to be verified to confirm the cardholder.)
It's worth noting that there's a very strong consumer guarantee in case of fraud: http://www.bacs.co.uk/bacs/businesses/directdebit/collecting...