Taking payments in multiple ways will increase your revenue and improve your customers’ experience. In this series, we’ll explore the many payment channels that can help you grow your business.
From gym memberships to streaming subscriptions, many businesses have implemented recurring billing plans. Recurring billing is an automated payment process for frequent and routine services or products. You set customers up on customized payment plans, securely store their customer information, and automatically charge them on a scheduled basis.
From a more streamlined process to a better customer experience, there are many benefits to recurring billing:
A steady, reliable income stream
One of the beautiful things about recurring billing is that you get peace of mind with a dependable source of income. With recurring billing, the steady stream of revenue helps you better predict revenue and forecast growth. This billing method makes it easy for your customers to make purchases. The easier you make it, the more customers sign up, which increases sales.
With recurring billing, you can help reduce credit card declines with notifications of when a customer’s card is about to expire, giving you enough time to reach out and update their payment information. You can even set up automated reminders that send an email to your customers asking them to update their credit card information.
Improved customer experience & satisfaction
Recurring billing allows you to provide your customers the easiest and most convenient experience. They’ll enjoy:
- Consistent payments – This way, they’re able to better manage their money.
- Auto-payments – It takes the onus to pay off your customers; they don’t have to worry about remembering payments or incurring late fees.
- Easy subscription renewals – By making renewal as smooth and seamless as possible, you remove friction and headaches. Your customers will be able to enjoy their product or service without interruption.
- Lower costs of individual sales – Customers don’t have to pay large upfront costs since each payment is more digestible.
- Flexible, customizable plans – You can bill your customers on monthly, weekly, or daily schedules.
Increased customer lifetime value
Recurring billing provides the opportunity to increase both customer loyalty and retention. This method helps you make it as easy as possible for your customers to do business with you by allowing them to pay conveniently, and convenience breeds loyalty. Recurring billing is also another communication channel between you and your customer, so you can utilize the communication to strengthen the bond between you and your customers, with exclusive offers and such.
A more efficient payment processing process
Recurring billing reduces the amount of manual work on your end, improves operational efficiency, and increases productivity. Automating your scheduled and recurring payments will reduce the pains of manual billing. Your billing team will spend less time manually putting through transactions on every billing cycle. Just store your customer’s preferred credit card and add them to a plan.
Recurring billing reduces administrative time and operational costs. Recurring billing means an automated, fast, and simple checkout and increased cash flow because you no longer need to chase checks or worry about late payments. Notifications that credit cards are about to expire and automated reminders for your customers to update their information means you don’t have to deal with card declines. Recurring billing also means errors are significantly reduced because you simply enter customer information once and subscribe them to a plan for subsequent payments.
Why Payfirma?
Secure
Payfirma ensures that the sensitive customer information needed for recurring billing payments is stored securely and abides by PCI Compliance rules. Our customer vault lets you securely store up to 5 different cards on each customer profile.
Easy
You can update a customer’s default card at any time and select which saved card to use when charging a customer. Once set up, recurring billing requires no maintenance; you don’t need to install or maintain hardware, reducing IT expenses and management headaches.
Low cost
The implementation cost is low; besides a computer or mobile device and an internet connection, you don’t need to purchase additional hardware. You’re always kept up to date because Payfirma’s cloud-based system continually updates to meet the demands of the market at no extra cost to the client.
Analytics
Payfirma is an omnichannel payment management system; PayHQ collects all the data from your transactions and aggregates them in one convenient place, providing you with valuable sales insight. This makes it easy for you to analyze your payments data in real time to see what your top sellers are, track recurring revenue, or monitor each plan’s performance. With payment analytics, you can improve sales forecasting, create reports, manage churn, and make better business decisions.
Recurring billing is a win-win for everyone. This payment process improves your office efficiencies and helps you provide an exceptional experience for your customers.