How to Manage Recurring Billing with CardPointe

Did you know that the value of all card payments grew to more than $8 trillion in 2018? A major payment gateway that handled all this was CardConnect.

A few important reasons why businesses flocked to CardPointe was because it simplified the payment process for their end consumer, it seamlessly integrated with other systems like accounting software, and offered solid security to the businesses to protect their end consumer’s payment details. One other reason was also that businesses could do recurring billing with CardPointe but, alas, that is no longer the case.

In this blog, while understanding more about CardPointe and why it still works for so many businesses, we will take you through a guide on managing Cardpointe recurring billing with SubscriptionFlow to ensure that you do not miss out on collecting recurring payments just because CardPointe has dropped it.

What is CardPointe?

Founded by the payment platform CardConnect, CardPointe is a payment gateway that processes the payments made by your end consumer. Some of the features that CardPointe offers are as follows:

1.      A virtual terminal to process payments on laptops.

2.      A physical terminal for making transactions in person.

3.      A digital application for making mobile payments on the go.

4.      The option to host a page specifically dedicated to making payments for their users’ online stores. Tailor these pages endlessly to improve the experience of your end consumer.

How did recurring billing with CardPointe work before?

Before it got discontinued, recurring billing with CardPointe worked like in the exact same way it works with other payment platforms—you were given the option to devise and then manage billing cycles that would be billed automatically as per the time intervals you had decided on. Merchants had the option of billing their plans directly via CardPointe where all their customers would have to do would be approving the automatic charging from the bank account that they had submitted to CardPointe, and the payment platform would handle the rest.

A few of the other features offered are as follows:

1.      The platform enabled monthly, quarterly, or annual billing.

2.      A user-friendly interface was specifically designed to ensure that it was easy for merchants to modify their billing plans, add new or remove existing users, and even track their current users’ payment histories.

3.      reCAPTCHA verification was enabled to help filter out bots.

4.      Payment confirmation pages were made customizable to improve the security of the merchants as well as the end consumers.

5.      For businesses that had their operations sprawled across different cost centres, the platform enabled setting up multiple merchant IDs.

If handling recurring payments with CardPointe was so good, why was it discontinued?

Though CardConnect never publicly came clean on why they had discontinued this service which seemed to be a win-win for all actors involved, there have been speculations as to why they may have done this. These reasons have been broken down for you in the following three pointers:

1)     A Change in Priorities

Companies change, man. A lot of times they drop their existing features and services for reasons such as a feature no longer being profitable, them lacking the technical labor to continue offering the feature, or even a prescient understanding that the feature may go out of fashion in the future and so the company is simply trying to cut their losses in the future by jumping ship right now.

2)     Rise of New Technologies

In the world of financial technology, companies need to constantly be on top of the latest trends and technology to ensure that they offer their users the most efficient and safest possible experience. As some users had begun point out in their review of CardPointe, it is possible that CardPointe may have felt that it was better to drop a service whose quality they could not maintain for too long and not risk the damage to their brand that continuing such a faulty service may have resulted in.

3)     Outsourcing the Job to Better Third-party Software

This is where CardPointe’s seamless integration capabilities come in. Knowing that their service integrates well with most other software, CardConnect ensured that for those users who wished to still retain the service of recurring billing, they would have the chance to integrate with robust subscription-billing software (like SubscriptionFlow).

What are some of third-party software you can integrate CardPointe with to help manage recurring billing?

If you’re on the lookout for alternatives to CardPointe’s recently scrapped recurring billing management features, go through the following list in which we have listed down some of the market-leading options alongside their most desirable selling points:

1.     SubscriptionFlow

SubscriptionFlow is the best bang for your buck starting at just $99 a month. It also offers tiered pricing for its tiers which are priced as follows:

1.      Startup plan: $99 a month for 3 users.

2.      Rise plan: $149 a month for 10 users.

3.      Scale plan: $249 a month for 25 users.

4.      Enterprise plan: Custom pricing is available for enterprise-level clients depending on their needs and the company size.

In addition to that, SubscriptionFlow also offers features like retention management with its app of RetentionFlow. RetentionFlow incorporates AI to ensure that your users remain loyal to your business and devises ingenious AI-powered solutions to keep your churn rate low.

Some features are as follows:

1.      The ability to host secure payment pages.

2.      Multi-currency support.

3.      Dunning management.

SubscriptionFlow also integrates with a host of third-party software and services that render it capable enough to handle all your subscription-management needs.

2.     FreshBooks

FreshBooks remains an excellent choice for small businesses with limited users that are looking to scale. Plans are priced as follows:

1.      Lite plan: $4.25 a month for the first three months, then $17 a month. This plan offers free invoicing for up to 5 clients although it poses serious limitations in other features.

2.      Plus plan: $33.

3.      Premium plan $55.

FreshBooks offers robust integration services to more than 100 third-party applications which makes it a top priority for small businesses looking to expand.

3.     Zoho Subscriptions

This software caters best to large enterprises that require a plethora of features and services, and do not mind paying top dollar to get the best solution on the market. Zoho offers a list of features that make it especially attractive to these businesses.

If you are still on the fence about whether you should integrate CardPointe with SubscriptionFlow to manage your recurring billing, here’s a list of reasons why you should do it:

1.   Seamless Payment Experience

SubscriptionFlow offers highly customizable checkout pages to orchestrate a frictionless & branded checkout experience. If integrated, SubscriptionFlow will automate and bill invoices on time while CardPointe will manage the task of collecting the individual payments. This will eliminate the need for your technical labour to intervene manually.

2.   Customizable Billing Plans

SubscriptionFlow also lets you create customized billing plans while automating recurring payments to cater to those businesses who want to tailor different plans for different products and/or subscriptions. Having such variety boosts your cash flow.

3.   Enhanced Payment Security

CardPointe offers robust security in payment processing through tokenization and point-to-point encryption (P2PE). Cardpoint integration with SubscriptionFlow ensures each automated transaction is processed with the highest degree of payment security.

4.   Simplified Tax Management

SubscriptionFlow offers robust tax management, allowing businesses to even integrate with third-party tax management software or let SubscriptionFlow calculate your customers’ tax and bill them accordingly in their invoice.

Conclusion

CardPointe is a popular payment gateway, used worldwide to simplify and secure online payments. With the omission of the recurring payment feature in CardPointe’s recent update, it has become necessary for users to look for alternative options that allow them to use Cardpointe’s robust payment solution while collecting recurring payments tied to subscription plans.

This is where a subscription-management system comes in. In this blog, we have listed down three market-leading options – SubscriptionFlow, FreshBooks, and Zoho Subscriptions – to help you decide which should you use to manage your subscriptions.

If you’re looking for the best bang for your buck, book a demo with SubscriptionFlow now to integrate it with CardPointe and see for yourself how well the software handles your recurring billing needs.