FinTech News

Stripe Introduces New Subscription Billing Tool

With more and more businesses selling software and other services online, payment processing company Stripe has unveiled an upgraded subscription billing tool. Dubbed Stripe Billing, the new offering replaces Stripe Subscriptions and is aimed at reducing missed recurring payments from customers. As Geekwire reports, Stripe Billing includes a number of features to help SaaS and other companies get paid.

Once employed, the Stripe Billing system is said to utilize machine learning and predictive technology to determine when the best time to retry a payment will be. Additionally one major reason why subscription payments fail is due to outdated credit card information. To overcome this, Stripe has made deals with the four major credit card issuers (Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover) in order to retrieve updated credit card numbers and expiration dates without requiring customers to re-enter their data.

Another advantage Stripe says their new Billing system has is that it’s easier to set-up and maintain than other recurring payment options, enabling smaller companies to take advantage of the subscription business model. As Stripe’s billing product manager Tara Seshan told TechCrunch, “These large enterprise companies have the resources to build internal recurring billing in-house. Even then they would tell us what challenge it would be. What we did was took a step back and think about, how should this work, how can we make billing tools that are only available to enterprises be available to everyone. That meant something really flexible and really easy to implement.” She went on to say, “If you’re [running a small operation], you should have the same subscription tools as Spotify. What we have here is a set of building blocks so you get the speed and flexibility you need.”

According to their site, Stripe will take a 0.4% cut of payments made via the basic version of their new Billing system. However they will apparently waive fees for the first $1 million in payments made through the platform. The company also offers an additional product with “advanced features and discounted payment fees” that assesses a .07% fee.

Considering how many businesses are adopting or looking to adopt a subscription model, it makes sense that a FinTech company like Stripe would take a swing at simplifying the process and allowing smaller startups to jump on board. Moreover, by combining the recurring billing tool with regular invoicing, Stripe is giving SaaS and other companies the option to utilize a variety of billing models. As a result it’s easy to see why Stripe is consistently regarded as one of the top FinTech firms to watch.

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