How to Securely Enable Recurring Payments

In Brief: The ability to enable recurring payments has become increasingly popular across a variety of industries because of the convenience and efficiency they offer. This article will give a better understanding of the benefits that come along with recurring and repeat payments as well as the importance of utilizing the right technology to ensure a secure payment experience.

The recurring and repeat payment model is growing across industries, both for business-to-business and business-to-consumer. With advantages including increased convenience, conversions, and efficiency, these automatic, repeated payments serve as a win-win for both businesses and their customers.

But to reap the full benefits of recurring payments, sellers must ensure they have the strategy, technology, and procedures to support this fast-growing payment paradigm.

Beyond Subscriptions— A Booming Recurring Payment Model

When people think about a recurring payment model, subscription services may be the first example that comes to mind. However, recurring payments include scheduled payments for non-profit donations, rent, insurance, healthcare, and online learning. Organizations that offer recurring payments see numerous advantages.

5 Top Benefits of Recurring Payments

1. Convenience and time-savings to customers. Customers don’t have to remember to re-order items or search for their credit card for payment or to pay rent. Research shows this convenience also increases customer loyalty and engagement.
2. Predictable business revenue. By enhancing revenue predictability, recurring payments help businesses manage their cash flow more effectively for better financial planning.
3. Reduced cart abandonment. Consumers abandon more than 70% of online shopping carts. Moreover, 30% will leave the purchase if they have to re-enter their credit card information. By effectively eliminating the checkout step, recurring payments reduce potential exits during the payment process.
4. Increased customer spending: By improving the customer experience, recurring payments can help drive engagement and higher purchase volumes. Nearly 2/3 of loyal customers are likely to buy more frequently, and over 30 percent are willing to pay more for that brand. This increase is similar for nonprofits. People who make a monthly recurring donation give over 40 percent more annually than one-off donors.
5. Streamlined business operations. Billing automatically through recurring payments reduces administrative work and decreases potential errors, improving productivity.

Securing the Repeat and Recurring Payment Processes

Ensuring the entire payment process is secure is key to offering a seamless, simple purchase experience. From storing sensitive customer data to securely processing transactions, every step must be protected with advanced security measures. For instance, while storing payment details securely is essential, technologies like tokenization play a critical role in safeguarding data during transactions and reducing exposure to sensitive customer information.

After all, when consumers trust businesses with their account information, they’re understandably unforgiving if their data is leaked. To maintain trust, engagement, and loyalty, businesses need to provide security in addition to convenience. They can achieve this by implementing these must-have protective measures:

• Become PCI compliant. Ensure your business adheres to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS). PCI compliance involves steps such as maintaining a secure network, regularly monitoring systems, and protecting cardholder data. PCI compliance is a requirement of the credit card brands (Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and AmEx) and is the foundation of keeping payment data safe.
• Use tokenization. Keep sensitive customer data secure by translating that information into a “token”– a randomized alpha-numeric string that replaces the account number of a specific cardholder. When a customer makes a transaction, the token retrieves the original data, which is stored in a secure vault. This process reduces exposure to the customer’s primary account number.
• Have secure vault storage. This is critical for protecting data from unauthorized access and is a key component of PCI compliance.
• Integrate fraud detection tools. Implementing security features like fraud detection can help identify unusual patterns in transactions, such as suspicious payment activity, and flag or block potentially fraudulent transactions before they are processed. This proactive approach helps reduce the risk of fraud, safeguarding customer data and financial transactions.

To leverage the advantages of recurring and repeat payment options, businesses must ensure their payment processes are seamless, secure, and current.

Learn how Wind River Payments can integrate recurring and repeat payment solutions into existing software platforms, helping drive revenue growth, streamline operations, and deliver convenience to customers.