Recurring payments are the new trend in small businesses. Big companies like Netflix and Spotify have been doing this for years. But it’s only now that they’re reachable for businesses of any size. In this article we’re going to see what are recurring payments and how you can easily implement them in your business.
What are recurring payments?
Recurring payments are simply, payments that repeat automatically every month. Think of your Netflix subscription. You connect your credit card once, and every month your subscription fee is debited automatically from your credit card. You don’t need to do anything on your side as this is automatic.
This type of payments diminish non-payers and improve your overall cash flow. You don’t need to collect every month, because your customers’ credit cards are charged automatically. Customers also love them, as they don’t face awkward collecting calls and service interruptions. It’s a win-win situation for you and your customers.
When implementing this type of payments, you can also have more control on who your customers are. You can track easily who are your best clients and which type of customer you like the most. This is specially important for your customer acquisition strategy, this is, how to get new customers. People are more prone to subscribe to a service if they know they won’t have to pay a bill manually every month. You don’t need to hire expensive collection agencies.
What are my options to implement recurring payments?
There are several options to implement this type of payments in your business. Some options require heavy knowledge of code (like Stripe Subscriptions API), Others require a big volume to be viable for a small business (for example, Zuora). When you choose a solution to implement, always compare the cost, not only of the solution itself but implementation costs.
The most cost-effective and proven solutions is definitely Stripe. It supports advanced settings like trial periods, or to add a set-up fee before the subscriptions. The downside, is that it’s developer-centric. You need a website and advanced code to implement Stripe. While this can be a viable solution for a lot of startups and also big businesses with IT departments, this can not be the reality of most SMEs. Still, their solution is the most robust around, and also the cheapest as you don’t need a merchant account.
Non-code alternatives
If you don’t have the time, or the skills to implement Stripe Subscriptions API, try PayForm. PayForm is a simple way to implement Stripe recurring payments using simple payment forms. You create a form and then send this form to your customers via an unique URL or embedding it in your own website. The platform takes care of the logic beneath so you can configure trial periods, set-up fees and other type of advanced recurring subscriptions options visually.
You can also connect it to hundreds of external apps without using any code. With the Zapier integration included for free in PayForm, you can connect your forms to popular apps like MailChimp (to send beautiful welcome emails to your customers. Other apps that you can connect are QuickBooks (to automate bookkeeping), or Hubspot (to track your customers in their free CRM).
PayForm is also 100% free to get started, including recurring subscriptions and only charges a small commission fee of the transaction.
How to get started with recurring payments?
The best way to get started fast is to implement a non-code recurring payment solution. This will save you months in development, and costs associated with this implementation. This is specially important in businesses that deal with digital or personal services as implementation time tend to be higher.
Try PayForm for free to create recurring Stripe powered payment forms in a couple of minutes. Your customers will love them and you will forget about the pain of collecting from them every month.
