I run a few subscription based web services (most recently http://ww.signatureconfirm.com). I’ve been using Paypal’s recurring payments in conjunction with their Web Payments Pro product to schedule subscription payments for a few years now.
I want to move away from Paypal because I feel bullied by their pricing (every time I turn around, they’re adding fees and raising my reserve).
Has anyone ever migrated away from Paypal recurring payments? If so, how did you do it? Paypal aside, how would you migrate away from any recurring payment provider?
Thanks William! Can you elaborate on your point a bit? I’m working to migrate recurring payments to Authorize.net and allow the Paypal profiles to degrade naturally into that system (as users update credit info, cancel accounts, etc.). Would Authorize.net qualify as a “high-end system” like you mentioned?
they own your business and you cannot
move the payments or even sell your
business to another.
If you were using a high end system then
all you would need to do is change the
merchant account and they would all switch
over automatically on the next billing cycle.
I’m not storing the payment information, so I can’t re-auth the cards. I’m thinking the hybrid route as well. Have you had any experience with that sort of thing?
If you were storing all of the payment information I suppose you could simply re-auth the cards provided you had clear permission to do so, but even that seems risky as the billing handler would change and may confuse or upset customers. Without this info I don’t see any way to transfer payments short of asking people to sign back up… You could always hybrid and charge the old ones via the same provider while moving new people to a new system.