Rethinking the roles of recurring payment in online business

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Recurring payment or subscription-based payment was often seen unneeded in most business practices, but now, it has become a viable option for business growth. Previously, the subscription-based payment only works on specific online platforms such as music apps, games or others that need the users to commit to paying at a particular time. Now, the idea has sprouted to the unthinkable online shopping practices such as in food supplies, groceries, beauty boxes, baby products, meal plans, and more. The mentioned products have been listed among the most subscribed products globally.

Hence, it is always advisable for businesses to Rethink the usability of recurring function on their business. It should be considered as an essential option where sometimes having it is better than not having it at all.

Recently, e-commerce is not only a place to find products, some of them now even able to shift the roles from a seller to a decision-maker and advisor to their consumers indirectly through what they offer and this includes payment convenience.

The roles of recurring payment

  1. Increase memberships

Recurring payment will eventually require commitment from your customers. Hence membership is always necessary. But, this only applies when they find your services and products are worth coming back for and when they still find it hassle to pay multiple times. This will help to strengthen the customer’s loyalty towards your shop and maintain the payment flow for both your company and your customer. When this framework is found convenience to more customers, the number of memberships subscribed to your shop will eventually grow.

 

  1. Lessen delayed payment

It is in human nature that brain tends to forget the details that somehow irrelevant to them. The amount can be one, where it is only relevant when it is reminded of its due. You will never know how thankful your customers would be when they could keep any timely issues away. This will also help them to avoid delayed payment on their side and even your party. Be reminded that delayed payments can mess with your Cash Flow Forecasting badly.

  1. Add value to business

The value in industry always start from the way you understand your customers and lighten their burden. Recurring payment can help you to carry out a better operation which makes timely payment no longer a heavy load to them. Instead, they will find it easy and prefers to follow this routine better. Plus, most customers nowadays would always try to find a way to minimize their interactions with sellers, not because they hate it, but it is due to inconsistent time response and processing. Hence, automated billing should be one of the answers to accommodate to the lifestyle where anyone has gotten busier. This should be a call for you to start seeing what offerings can perform better with the help of recurring feature, and why manual billing is no longer helpful as it used to.

  1. Reduce material costs

Material costs can be a bit petty, and along with it, you can miss the small prices that are important for the manual bill processing. When you adopt the recurring payment feature, both material and resource costs can be deducted as you replace the old-style bills to the modern electronic statements, which is automated. It is also able to eliminate the rooms of mistakes in manual statements usually made by a human.

Conclusion

You never know what recurring payment may bring in the future just like how we did not expect meal plan as an item subscribed by customers; considering it’s a time-sensitive matter. This is because the idea of convenience brought by recurring payment is yet to get the exposure in most parts of Southeast Asia. Hence, more Southeast Asia industry players should look further on how their products or services will become more convenient with the presence of recurring payment in business, for example, in property rental service. Recurring payment, in fact, has long been offered by local Southeast Asia company such as MOLPay. Hence the roles of the features need to be further rethink for more business growth opportunities.

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