Guest Author: Sue Schoenfeld, Beyond Business Advocate
If this pandemic hasn’t placed a priority on streaming services like Netflix and Amazon, I’m not sure what else will! Raise your hand if you’ve ever tried to catch up (read: binge) your favorite show, but found yourself shut out because your subscription expired. Perhaps you went to place an order online and your new credentials are required before completing the transaction? Same here. It is so frustrating and now business owners can totally avoid these interruptions with our Account Updater service.
Read on for the details and find out how your business can take advantage of this time and sanity saver. Spoiler alert: You won’t have to wait or contact your customers due to delays typically associated with their lost, stolen, or expired credit cards.Â
Spotlight on Account Updater
When your automatic payments fail to process for one reason or another, your services — from Amazon to Pandora, your gym membership, to Birchbox — suddenly stop. More often than not, the card you used to set up these services has simply expired without you even realizing it. Or, if you’ve reported your card lost or stolen, the card issuer will send you a replacement with new credentials. We’ve all been there for one reason or another.
Typically, when payments fail to process for any of these reasons you need to dig out your new replacement card and update the credentials for each system or service that pulls automatic payments each month. If you neglect to update those credentials, your payments will obviously not go through.
Account Updater allows you to skip this time-consuming step and save any future interruptions to your services. Super helpful as a consumer, but what does this mean for you as a business owner?
The Benefits to Business Owners
If only Amazon offered this kind of support. Unfortunately, they don’t but you can, and the benefits extend to both you and your customers.
With Account Updater as one of your solutions, you won’t have to chase a customer for payments for your services due to these types of card changes on their end. Whether you’re simply charging a new transaction with a card on file or billing your customers on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis, Account Updater makes it possible to continue collecting payments, regardless of changes to your customers’ credit cards.
Let’s say your customer has automatic payments set up but then their card is lost, stolen, or simply reissued ahead of expiration. Here’s how that story unfolds:
Obviously, you don’t know that your customer’s card is lost, stolen, or expired. You charge them whatever the recurring fee for your services is or bill them with the card on file, but their card generates an automatic decline. Since you can’t collect the payment you’re owed, you must now call the customer to alert them of the problem, likely leave a voicemail, and wait for them to return your call, which they may or may not do that same day. The best-case scenario is you collect payment on average four business days later. Any lag time in correspondence (aka, “phone tag”) between you will naturally mean that you’ll wait even longer to collect your payment.
With Account Updater, you have all that new information behind the scenes a service that automatically collects new card information from your customer’s card issuer and updates it without you ever needing to do a thing! This saves you from calling your customers when payments are declined due to lost, stolen, or expired card scenarios. Additionally, it saves your customers from having to update their new card information.
Services remain active, payments are processed and received, and business runs smoothly for all parties involved. It’s a win-win and couldn’t be easier to set up.
Schedule some time on my calendar and I’ll help you take advantage of Account Updater in your business.
About the Author: Sue Schoenfeld, Beyond Business Advocate
Sue Schoenfeld is the self-proclaimed “Merchant Services Geek.” Why? Because helping business owners with processing is not something she just does, it’s something that she loves. Sue has 12 years of experience in the credit card processing space and is a consistent top performer. She’s one of Beyond’s 28 original founders and by no coincidence earned the largest bank partnership at Beyond to date. She prides herself on her fresh approach to helping businesses solve problems and save time. She honors a fluid approach with all her relationships. “What business owners need today is different than what they need in 6-12 months. I’m in it for the long haul and I’m willing to guide the business in a way that makes the most sense for them.” Â
Learn more or contact her at sueschoenfeld.com or me.getbeyond.com/sueschoenfeld
