In this chapter you’ll learn how to ensure recurring card payments are uninterrupted.
If your business model depends on regular, repeating payments, you don’t want these unnecessarily uninterrupted — and neither does your customer. For this reason many businesses decide to keep their cards on file.
When storing the cards on behalf of your shoppers, you have to make sure their details are up-to-date — even in if the card is lost, stolen or expired. For this purpose the card schemes provide Account Updater services that let businesses and acquirers replace invalid card numbers with new ones.
Adyen Account Updater works in real-time to ensure your cards-on-file are valid. We connect you to Visa and Mastercard Account Updaters without you having to formally enroll with the schemes and demonstrate compliance, which is handled by us. So, whether the transaction happens today or two years from now, you can be sure the card is up-to-date.
Payments often fail because of an outage or downtime in the patchwork of legacy systems that make up the traditional payment flow. To limit the impact it’s worth retrying payments that fail because of technical reasons.
Here’s an example.
HelloFresh was experiencing a high rate of refusal due to technical issues. To combat this, Adyen identified when and why the transaction had failed, and retried it immediately again via a different acquiring route.
There’s not much you can do if your customer has insufficient funds. But you might be able to increase the odds of a successful payment if you bill them at the right time of the month.
The graph below shows the refusals due to insufficient funds in different countries. The UK, for example, sees a spike in refusals toward the end of the month, just before payday.
Refusals due to insufficient funds
Adyen offers integrations to key subscription management systems, including Aria, Demandware, Magento, and Zuora. You’ll benefit from a range of features like Adyen Account Updater, and Auto Retries.
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Each step along the way provides opportunities for optimization. The following chapters will explain how.
Chapter 1 | Optimize your checkout
Chapter 2 | Streamline point of sale payments
Chapter 3 | Expand with local payment methods
Chapter 4 | Fine-tune your risk management
Chapter 5 | Get the best from your card processing
Chapter 6 | Manage recurring payments