our customers payment behavior

Discussion in 'Payments processing' started by erwinvdb, Sep 9, 2009.

  1. erwinvdb

    erwinvdb aMember Pro Customer

    Joined:
    Aug 30, 2007
    Messages:
    264
    Dear fellow aMember clients,

    In a recent study about payment behavior I read that in my country payments via paypal and creditcard is not as popular in the US. These payment methods are both used in about 12% of the online sales.
    The most popular direct payment method is iDeal (22%).
    Offline payment is by far the most favorite (> 50%)

    Hence I accept on my site the following payment methods: offline, iDeal and paypal.

    Nothing shocking so far, right? Ok, now it gets intriguing.

    Up till now I've only accepted full payments. For example a 12 month membership priced at 50 per month:
    12 x 50 = 600 to be paid up front and in one payment.

    I thought about changing the payment structure of my site. But as paypal is not used that much and both offline and iDeal do NOT support recurring payments, plus offline payment require some hand on activity done by the client, I wonder how many people do NOT continue their membership because of this manual labour they have to do. As you might know: procrastination is difficult to beat and procrastinators only take action when there's no other way out. To translate it to our business: until they need to login there's no urge to pay and continue their membership.

    Ok I can send out reminders and instructions for payment, but they still have to do it each month.

    So before I change my payment structure I'm interested in learning your experience with the above. Especially those of you located in Europe who have to deal with the same cultural payment behavior.
    Questions I have are:
    - Will I get more clients because the initial amount is low?
    - Will I get more/less cancellations when the initial amount is low and the payment has to be manually completed?

    I look forward to read your thoughts/experiences.

    Erwin
  2. erwinvdb

    erwinvdb aMember Pro Customer

    Joined:
    Aug 30, 2007
    Messages:
    264
    Anyone? Come on guys... please?

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