Recurring payments can be fantastic for your business. There are a vast variety of benefits that can be seen when operating on a recurring payment model. To see these benefits, however, your billing process has to be efficient, functional and easy for the consumer. There are numerous challenges and issues to overcome when setting up your recurring billing process, here are 5 main challenges to consider.

1: Invoices

A recurring billing model will undoubtedly end in a lot of invoices. One of the main benefits of e-commerce is automation, automation of simple processes like invoices saves you time, allowing you to focus on the things that really matter in your business. To overcome this, use a payment gateway that provides automatic invoices as a function. If your unsure on which payment gateway provides this, see a comparison of the most popular payment gateways.

2: Flexible Payments

Flexible payments give you the ability to adjust your price and frequency of payment, with easy readjustments as your business develops. Not all payment gateways can support adjustments as simple as others. When choosing your payment gateway, take extra care in looking at how flexible and easy to use there payment interface is. Pay extra attention to any hidden costs for extra listings, payment frequency adjustments and pricing alterations. Alongside this, take note of if your gateway supports multi-currency and multi-language functions. If you sell products or services internationally, pay extra attention to this feature as not all payment gateways offer it for free.

3: Secure Payments

Security should be an utmost concern for any online business. Every organisation that accepts online payments is at risk of fraud and chargebacks, both of which can be highly damaging to your business. To avoid these issues, you need to pay close attention to how secure your payment gateway is.
At a complete minimum, your gateway should comply with the PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). Level 1 compliance means that they have reached the highest level of security possible. Alongside this, other security features such as address verification, duplication checks, CVV2, CVC2 and CSC should come as standard. Ensure that your gateway possesses all of these features and you shouldn't have to worry about online security.

4: Payment Support

Customers have various ways of paying for things online. Make sure your recurring payment gateway supports all of the major credit cards, debit cards and popular payment services such as PayPal, Authorize.net and more. It should be clearly listed on your gateways website which methods of payment they support. The more the merrier, otherwise you could be locking out customers who are not supported by your billing system.

5: Business Support

Poor communication between you and your payment gateway provider can leave you in a sticky situation. Let's say for example your payment gateway fails, every minute this issue is not resolved is a minute that you can be ** losing money**, alongside damaging your businesses online reputation. Lots of payment gateways avoid offering phone support. Before you choose your payment gateway, have a look at what support services they offer you. The best you can get is phone or live chat, both of these options allow for issues to be fixed quickly.

So now you're aware of the main challenges faced in recurring payment systems. Your one step closer to utilising this strategy to its fullest potential. For more information on all things subscription, see our blog, it's full of useful and relevant information to help you get the most out of your subscription website.