Why do we still use a payment technology that Elvis carried around in his wallet?
Last month, 17% of the credit cards CaptainU attempted to process on monthly web-app subscriptions failed.
To be fair, we try to run cards for a few extra months after their first failure because some of them are debit cards that don’t have sufficient funds for a month or two. So 17% includes build up from a few previous months.
For most cards that fail, we got little more explanation than, “This transaction has been declined” or, “Contact card issuer for details.” Right, let me just call a zillion banks to find out why these cards are failing. I don’t even know who the card issuer is.
What’s particularly painful is that these are subscriptions we’ve earned because we have good product that people want to pay for. We follow all of the dunning best practices, but still — 17%.
There’s a land rush for payment processing — Square, FeeFighters, Stripe, Chargify, and Braintree, Recurly to name a few. Everyone wants a piece of the action, because it’s gigantic. I’ve talked with folks at a number of these companies, but no one seems to be paying attention to the biggest problem.
I really don’t care that I can get an average of .25% lower here. And I really don’t care that so and so has a slick UI with rounded corners and gradients that are easy on the eye. What I care about is that 17% of our transactions failed last month.
