Playing off consumers' desire to pay for only what they've consumed, subscription management and billing platform Recurly has added Venmo and a pay-as-you-go model to its platform.
Wallet enables subscribers to add multiple cards, e-wallets and digital payment methods, providing the option to pay preferred ways for specific transactions. In adding
"Having the Venmo option and support is really important now because many subscription-based products are shared by people, so splitting the bill with Venmo is helpful," said Richard Crone, chief executive of San Carlos, Calif.-based payments consulting firm Crone Consulting LLC.
One of Venmo's top use cases is recurring bill payments, Crone said. "Integrating Venmo into the process will help put Recurly on par with some of the biggest platforms."
San Francisco-based Recurly's billing platform handles more than $7 billion in annual transactions and is integrated with 22 different payment gateways worldwide and handles most any payment method, but it is part of a fairly crowded field with powerful competitors like Braintree/PayPal and Stripe Billing. Others are Chargebee, Zuora, Rebilly and Amdocs' Vindicia.
But the competitive nature of recurring billing is a reason Recurly CEO Dan Burkhart is enthusiastic about what Wallet will bring to merchants and their customers.
"Wallet functionality provides an array of different options," Burkhart said. "More importantly for subscription-based businesses, continuity of billing is the game. If a credit card is declined or fails, there is continuity in the Wallet falling back on the next available method the user has chosen."
Recurly views the "pay as you go" feature as one that taps into a broadening trend in which merchants can obtain a payment in advance that is held in a prepaid account, and the consumer pays only for what is used. It opens the door for subcategories and micro purchases of digital content or products.
"It's a consumption-based pricing model that better aligns the offering with value for customers," Burkhart said. "It is a fairer way for the consumer, and a better alignment of paying for what you are getting."
The option is available for Recurly merchants like Sling, Twitch, BarkBox, FabFitFun, ViacomCBS, WineDirect, Pipedrive and others to incorporate for their users.
“Recurly gives us access to a multitude of payment methods and gateways, which makes it easy for us to enter new markets and reach into new audiences as our business evolves over time,” Devin Loftis, chief technology officer of WineDirect, said in a press release. “It has been incredibly impactful in all areas of business, from ensuring a flawless customer experience to making sure we are optimizing for payment acceptance and minimizing failed transactions.”
Colin Harty, director of billing at Pipedrive, pointed to the multiple payment methods available on the Recurly Wallet, including ACH, as a key for his company's bottom line.
“Having an option to process higher contract values and higher transaction volumes using multiple payment methods will allow us to reduce payment processing fees, save on operational costs and meet our customer needs more effectively," Harty said in the release. "Having a secondary backup payment method is going to be a game changer and will help us to improve decline rates, maximize collected revenue through a backup payment method, and reduce involuntary churn.”
As consumers seek easier ways to pay, the subscription model and recurring billing with automatic payment is becoming more the norm. But any consumer with a streaming service like Netflix knows how the payment process works — automatically without any direct engagement with the provider after initial registration and payment method choices.
"It's the forever transaction if someone signs up for recurring billing, and it is good for cash flow and makes it harder for the customer to leave," Crone said. "This is a pricing model that has really come into vogue, and one that e-commerce, order-ahead and in-app purchases has enabled."
