Since the hit of the global Coronavirus pandemic, India has been on its upward trend to become cashless. As per the new guidelines of the Reserve Bank of India, businesses cannot charge more than INR 5,000 per transaction as a recurring one from their customers. As per its guidelines, every recurring digital transaction such as UPI, eWallets, QR, UPI, and e-mandate would be required for e-mandate registration. This law has been introduced to make customers’ payments more secure and convenient.
In the case of a small business, it is time and effort-saving to accept recurring payments, for both the merchants and their customers. It helps them to avoid any chances of missing payments and effectively increases revenues.
Here in this article, we are going to focus on various steps via which you can accept recurring or automated payments from a customer with the use of a smart India payment gateway such as Zaakpay.
What is a Recurring or Automated Payment?
Recurring payments are the charges that are scheduled for deduction from the customer’s Credit Card or bank account for any type of subscription or regular service. Recurring payments are often scheduled on an agreed date of the month, week, quarter, or year. The biggest advantage of recurring payments is that they save a lot of time for the merchants as well as the customers, and also help the merchants to retain their customers and have effective cash flows for the business by creating a better customer experience. Recurring payments are also called automated payments because these payments are deducted automatically from a customer’s bank account.
How to Accept Recurring Payments?
You are required to pick an appropriate India payment gateway for your business to accept such automated payments which enable a variety of payment methods and not only cards. It’s an opportunity for your small business to grow, so be sure you adopt a smart one. A payment link from your website’s dashboard may also be used to charge recurring payments from your customers. Below are the steps following which your small business can accept recurring payments from your customers.
- Pick a smart payment gateway for your business– Payment partners’ services differ from each other and not just for billing help they provide. They take and offer different periods to get the funds credited from your customers to your account. Many of the payment service providers let your customers proceed with the checkout on your web page, while many may require them to redirect to a different page that is owned by them. The package offered by them depends upon the following –
- The currency range they provide to your international customers
- Payment methods such as Debit/Credit card, Net banking, UPI, eWallets, Google Pay, Apple Pay, QR scanning, it is an important point to note that you must pick a gateway that offers a variety of payments methods to avoid customer cart rejection
- The kind of shopping cart integration that they offer
A smart gateway provides high security to your customer’s data and takes care of customer convenience by offering simple and fewer steps for checkout. A small business merchant is required to set up a payment gateway that is not only offering competitive charges but is also easier and simpler in compliance. Use Zaakpay’s payment gateway or payment link tool to have a secured and quick installation and real-time payments within seconds.
- Select a recurring billing software– The next important step is to find a recurring billing software that is both advanced in technology and efficient in working. An ideal recurring billing software must have the following minimum capabilities inbuilt in it-
- Accounts Integration– A billing software that complies with your books is the most effective, as you don’t have to put extra effort in terms of money and time in maintaining financial records. A vigorous integration with the accounting software leaves no chances or reconciliation problems in the records. In addition, there is global tax support which will give you benefit in terms of understanding and interpreting tax laws.
- Invoice Creation– A precise and well-designed invoice creation builds trust in your customers by providing all the necessary information such as product quantity, quality, rate, date, description, and all other crucial details.
- Customer SSP for support– A recurring billing software must have the quality to provide the customer’s convenience such as pausing the subscription, upgrading it, or updating the bank account/ card details. The SSP (Self-Service Portal) must provide a user-friendly interface as well.
- Checkout pages– If you want your customers to experience better payment processing, you must make sure to offer a smooth checkout procedure to avoid customer cart rejection. A smart and customized checkout can reduce your customer’s as well as your time.
- A must-have dashboard– The recurring billing software must provide you with the statistics of your business transaction to help you understand the trends by offering automated reports, summaries, and metrics. Through this, you can analyze your business growth in the best way possible.
- Automated emails– The recurring billing software must have a pre-transactional email system to keep your customers updated and informed about regular updates and billing lifecycles.
- Demonstrative APIs– Developers are the first ones to experience the software while integrating your website. The billing software must make sure to provide them with useful and demonstrative APIs for integration and documentation.
- Compliance with PCI standard– PCI DSS standard is a must to have security measures in accounting software to provide security to sensitive customer data. Level 1 of the standard gives assurance to customers and protects them from any fraudulent activity in the accounting records.
Once you keep all the above things in mind, you can have a better rate of growth in your small business and provide your customers with effective and simpler checkouts continuously. Customer data security is the most important parameter for accepting recurring payments, and Zaakpay‘s payment products are built to help your small business in running smoothly by providing continuous customer satisfaction.