Make Products More Palatable With Recurring Billing

By Author: Bryan Johnson 1
Total Articles: 19
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Increasingly, merchants are offering customers more flexible payment terms.

Brick and mortar stores are reviving long dormant layaway policies and now some online retailers are starting to offer layaway. Sites like eBay are offering credit terms to customers for large purchases. Companies like Bill Me Later offer credit terms to customers on some ecommerce websites. Online retailers large and small are offering products that are paid for in monthly installments. Even some eBooks can be purchased in installments.

Why? The fact is, your $500 product is lot more palatable when it can be paid in 10 easy $50 installment payments.

What if I told you there is a way for online merchants to offer flexible payment terms with one easy solution?

The solution is called recurring billing.

With recurring billing the customer agrees to have their credit card charged every month for the amount and time agreed upon. The transactions occur automatically each month, making it a no hassle payment plan. In order to offer this to your customers, your online payment system must be support it.

Without the proper ...
... solution, setting up recurring billing is difficult for most merchants. Not all merchant accounts provide recurring billing capability. Some offer it for an additional fee. In short, setting up recurring billing with most merchant accounts can be a real pain.

Most importantly, it means you have to transmit the customers credit card information through your server, and possibly even have to store the information, which opens you up to PCI compliance issues. Storing the customers credit card information is a risky proposition. If the data is breached you could be held liable and face stiff fines.

How does a merchant offer recurring billing without all the hassle of storing credit card information?

One product, from Braintree Payment Solutions, allows you to maintain complete flexibility in subscription or installment billing and eliminate the need to process, store or transmit any credit card data or checking account information in your environment, thus avoiding PCI compliance issues. You can set up an unlimited number of recurring billing plans based on amount, duration and frequency. Better yet, you can easily create, update or cancel subscriptions via API or web-based interface.

So, if you want to make your products more palatable, try recurring billing!
Bryan Johnson is the author of this article on online payment systems. Find more information relating to recurring billing, and PCI Compliance here.