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Why I'm going back to capturing credit cards up front

planscope.io

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Re: Why I'm going back to capturing credit cards up front

#11

Post by jsonne »

GrinningFool wrote: post #8

The problem for me as a potential user is that I no longer trust some.random.dude.com with my CC info. I have no way to know if they're storing it locally unencrypted or if they're using a trustworthy third party provider. I'm down to maybe three places that have my CC on file. Everyone else, I enter it - every month - at time of payment. I don't exactly like this, either - there is still the possibility that a poorl…

Interesting. This is something we've thought about as we're designing our product. Would a little "powered by Balanced" image at the bottom help you think?

Re: Why I'm going back to capturing credit cards up front

#12

Post by Guvante »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #3

Another possibility that's not discussed: Get the CC number up front, but still require an 'opt in' after trial expiration to begin charging. You won't start automatically charging, you'll require the user to do something -- but the 'something' is just clicking a single 'yes, start charging me' button, with no need to enter the CC at that point, cause they entered it up front. I have no idea if that will work to get…

Most places will refund you if you miss the deadline by a day. As long as you do that it isn't sketchy.

Re: Why I'm going back to capturing credit cards up front

#13

Post by bdunn »

Guvante wrote: post #12
jrochkind1 wrote: post #3

Another possibility that's not discussed: Get the CC number up front, but still require an 'opt in' after trial expiration to begin charging. You won't start automatically charging, you'll require the user to do something -- but the 'something' is just clicking a single 'yes, start charging me' button, with no need to enter the CC at that point, cause they entered it up front. I have no idea if that will work to get…

Most places will refund you if you miss the deadline by a day. As long as you do that it isn't sketchy.

OP here. I'll refund the last month's payment regardless when canceling, no matter how long you've been a customer.

The goal isn't to trick people into paying. The goal is to make it feasible for one person (me) to support a product by attracting those who have a business case for using it.

Re: Why I'm going back to capturing credit cards up front

#14

Post by trcull »

lsc wrote: post #4

hmm. I've spent more time thinking about the ethics of recurring billing than the effectiveness of recurring billing; The big problem I have with recurring billing is that recurring billing tends to capture money from the 'I forgot about it' customers... users have to take an action to cancel the account. Especially for small-dollar items, a recurring charge can go for months unnoticed. I don't feel good about 'captu…

I've got to say, I'd hate your setup as a user. I've got a thousand different things to respond to/pay/deal with every month. I'd much rather have a service I use just autorenew than have to explicitly pay for it over and over again each month.

Provided...that the service had an easy and obvious way to cancel when I wanted to.

Re: Why I'm going back to capturing credit cards up front

#15

Post by racbart »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #3

Another possibility that's not discussed: Get the CC number up front, but still require an 'opt in' after trial expiration to begin charging. You won't start automatically charging, you'll require the user to do something -- but the 'something' is just clicking a single 'yes, start charging me' button, with no need to enter the CC at that point, cause they entered it up front. I have no idea if that will work to get…

This actually looks shady. If you're not going to charge me, then why the hell do you want my CC number?

Re: Why I'm going back to capturing credit cards up front

#16

Post by nhance »

racbart wrote: post #15
jrochkind1 wrote: post #3

Another possibility that's not discussed: Get the CC number up front, but still require an 'opt in' after trial expiration to begin charging. You won't start automatically charging, you'll require the user to do something -- but the 'something' is just clicking a single 'yes, start charging me' button, with no need to enter the CC at that point, cause they entered it up front. I have no idea if that will work to get…

This actually looks shady. If you're not going to charge me, then why the hell do you want my CC number?

Think about it this way.

If you're not ready to pay, then why the hell are you trying my service?

It's not a charity, it's a small amount of money each month.

Re: Why I'm going back to capturing credit cards up front

#17

Post by GrinningFool »

jsonne wrote: post #11
GrinningFool wrote: post #8

The problem for me as a potential user is that I no longer trust some.random.dude.com with my CC info. I have no way to know if they're storing it locally unencrypted or if they're using a trustworthy third party provider. I'm down to maybe three places that have my CC on file. Everyone else, I enter it - every month - at time of payment. I don't exactly like this, either - there is still the possibility that a poorl…

Interesting. This is something we've thought about as we're designing our product. Would a little "powered by Balanced" image at the bottom help you think?

For me personally it would - though I don't know to what extent my concern is one for a broader audience.

There is still a matter of trust: you can say you're using a given provider, but I can't verify it. It happens that I believe that you actually are - but unfortunately it really is a judgement call that has to be made for each service provider that I want to sign up with.

I think it's a larger issue, but the types of solutions that would help have largely been rejected by the market place: centralized storage of payment data with a few trusted providers.

I have some good (and I think relatively new) ideas on how to fix it, but it would require a fairly massive buy-in from the industry in order to work. So essentially, DoA.

Re: Why I'm going back to capturing credit cards up front

#18

Post by kintamanimatt »

GrinningFool wrote: post #8

The problem for me as a potential user is that I no longer trust some.random.dude.com with my CC info. I have no way to know if they're storing it locally unencrypted or if they're using a trustworthy third party provider. I'm down to maybe three places that have my CC on file. Everyone else, I enter it - every month - at time of payment. I don't exactly like this, either - there is still the possibility that a poorl…

I'm not sure your concern is warranted. Your bank provides a lot of protection against such fraudulent transactions, both at the time of authorization and after the fact if one does slip through. In any case, if you're really worried about your card number being stolen use a secondary card that you use for internet use only that just lives in your "backup wallet".

You're spending more of your life entering your credit card number every month than is likely to be spent dealing with fraud.

Re: Why I'm going back to capturing credit cards up front

#19

Post by DenisM »

dmix wrote: post #2

I also tried every sort of SaaS signup process (CC-first, every type of free-trial, etc) with my app ( https://carelogger.com ). I actually agree CC upfront is better overall than not. Depending on the audience of course (some business users don't have access to CC's without approval from finance dept). That being said. I found a higher conversion rate via what I call "resource-based" trials. One's not based on time…

I think it's called "freemium"?

Re: Why I'm going back to capturing credit cards up front

#20

Post by jtdowney »

GrinningFool wrote: post #8

The problem for me as a potential user is that I no longer trust some.random.dude.com with my CC info. I have no way to know if they're storing it locally unencrypted or if they're using a trustworthy third party provider. I'm down to maybe three places that have my CC on file. Everyone else, I enter it - every month - at time of payment. I don't exactly like this, either - there is still the possibility that a poorl…

It wouldn't even need to be a poorly written component. There is a good chance they would log the card number along side the transaction in their database.
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