Subscription Payments Meet Emerging Markets

Subscription-based offerings can be key to helping business-to-consumer (B2C) companies establish long-running relationships and lock down more predictable revenue streams. Effective subscription offerings require careful strategizing around payments, however. Should customers’ recurring payments fail, due to credit cards expiring or other issues, this could produce involuntary churn in which otherwise willing customers are accidentally dropped.

Merchants are working to revise approaches to reduce the risks of their payment methods leading to involuntary churn. The October Recurring Global Payments Tracker details the efforts made by merchants weighing the advantages and limitations of each payment method to find the most effective.

Around the Recurring Global Payments world

Companies like U.K.-based payment solution provider GoCardless see direct debit as the answer to subscription companies’ automatic recurring payment needs. The company recently launched a U.S. headquarters as part of its push to advance direct debit acceptance worldwide. GoCardless will enable American businesses to accept direct debit through ACH rails.

SmartDebit — another direct debt provider — is focusing its payment services efforts on the U.K., meanwhile. The company recently partnered with omnichannel payments company CashFlows in an effort to better serve U.K. businesses with recurring direct debit and card payments for accepting donations, membership dues and subscription payments.

Credit card transactions may not go far in India, however, where less than 3 percent of bank account holders reportedly have such payment instruments. Local payment gateway platform provider Cashfree is therefore working to enable businesses to accept automatic subscription and utility bill payments through eMandates, an Indian system enabling companies to automatically debit customers’ bank accounts.

Find more on these and all the other latest headlines in the Tracker.

Cloud Subscription Provider pCloud Seeks To Crack Emerging Market Payments Problems

B2C software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers can often struggle to bring their offerings into new countries. This is especially true for emerging markets where mainstream forms of payment like credit cards or PayPal are not commonly available. In this month’s Feature Story, Tunio Zafer, CEO of cloud storage provider pCloud, explains the company’s approach to introducing convenient subscription payment experiences to underdeveloped markets.

Read the full story in the Tracker.

Deep Dive: How Payment Experiences Help B2C Companies Recruit And Retain Subscribers

Subscription companies require easy onboarding and convenient payment experiences if they want to recruit customers. The merchants’ work isn’t done once customers register, however — businesses must also be sure that after they do the work to convert consumers into subscribers, they can keep these customers loyal. That means ensuring that the ongoing payments experience runs smoothly, and that customers are not unintentionally lost in the mix due to failures to update their credit card numbers or other accidental payment issues. This month’s Deep Dive explores the issue and strategies to provide compelling initial payment experiences as well as reduce risks of involuntary customer churn.

To read the Deep Dive, download the Tracker.

About the Tracker

The Global Recurring Payments Tracker, a collaboration with GoCardless, is a go-to monthly resource examining the complexities and challenges of the international recurring payments space, as well as the latest efforts to enable smoother cross-border transactions for global business growth.