volunteer expenses
Charity Expenses
Volunteer Mileage Rate
Clinical Trial Reimbursements
2026 Trial Regulations
Comparing Clinical Trial Participant Payment Methods in the UK
Randa Bennett
How do UK clinical trials pay participants, and which method is best?
UK sites, CROs and sponsors reimburse participants in three main ways: prepaid cards, manual BACS bank transfers, and specialised payment platforms. Each differs sharply on audit trail, admin, security, GDPR, data jurisdiction, inclusion and participant satisfaction, and those differences matter more than ever under the April 2026 clinical trial regulations, which treat financial records as evidence. The comparison below sets all three side by side so you can see which method holds up on the factors that decide compliance and participant experience.
| Factor | Prepaid cards | Manual BACS | Specialised platform |
|---|---|---|---|
| Audit trail | Proves a payment was sent, not received. A loaded card shows money left the site, not that it reached the participant. | Records fragmented across spreadsheets, email and portals. | Single auditable record linking study, visit, amount, payment, receipts and who approved each expense in one place. |
| Admin for Staff | Light day to day, heavy under audit. Easy to hand over a card, but reconstructing who got paid for inspection is brutal. | Heavy day to day and heavy under audit. Manual entry, batch transfers, spreadsheets to cross-reference. | Light day to day and under audit. The site team approve daily, and the record builds as they go, exportable in seconds. |
| Security | Participant data captured by an overseas third-party provider outside your control. | Sensitive financial data moved through unencrypted email and stored in local spreadsheets. No granular access controls, no immutable audit logs. | Encrypted throughout with role-based access. A claim can be updated while in review, but once it clears dual approval and is paid, the record is immutable. |
| GDPR | Demands passport, driving licence and address through KYC. Collecting more data than the payment needs goes against the ICO's data minimisation principle. | Emailing personal details, including bank information, and storing them in local files is the kind of handling the ICO flags as a reportable personal data breach risk. | A UK-based company built to be GDPR compliant by design, capturing only the data needed to process each claim and handling it responsibly. |
| Data Jurisdiction | Held by a US provider and exposed to the US CLOUD Act, which lets US authorities demand data even when it is stored in the UK. | No offshore jurisdiction issue, but data scattered across email and local files carries a risk. | Data held in the UK, under UK jurisdiction, and handled securely throughout. |
| Diversity and Inclusion | Activation barriers and ID checks hit elderly, cognitively impaired and digitally unfamiliar participants hardest, the very groups trials struggle to recruit and retain. | Long reimbursement waits penalise anyone who cannot afford to be out of pocket, narrowing who can take part. | Fast, direct payment with minimal admin helps the recruitment and retention of diverse participants. |
| Participant Satisfaction | Hidden fees leave participants feeling cheated, and activation is so hard that some abandon their money altogether. | Weeks of waiting and repeated chasing leave participants frustrated before payment arrives. | Reimbursed within 24 hours, direct to bank, with minimal admin. Participants feel respected rather than processed. |
| Speed of Payment | Card issued at the visit, but funds are locked until the participant activates it, which can take days or fail entirely. | Batch runs mean a 4 to 12 week wait between the visit and the money arriving. | Paid directly to the participant's bank within 24 hours of approval. |
| Fees to the Participant | Inactivity, ATM, replacement and liquidation fees are deducted from the balance, so the participant receives less than they were owed. | No fees deducted from the participant. | No fees deducted from the participant. The amount approved is the amount received. |
The findings above draw on vHelp's two white papers examining these payment methods in detail. For the compliance risks of prepaid cards under the 2026 regulations, see our white paper on prepaid cards for clinical trial participants. For why manual BACS processes struggle under MHRA inspection, see our white paper on BACS clinical trial payments and MHRA inspection.
vHelp is a UK-based specialised payment platform for clinical trial participant reimbursement. It pays participants directly to their bank within 24 hours, with no fee to the participant, keeps all data within UK jurisdiction, and gives sites a single auditable record fit for the 2026 regulations. If you would like to see how it works for your trials, get in touch with us on Hello@vhelp.co.uk.
Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
