RECURRING CARD PAYMENTS (RCP)

WPM Software's Recurring Card Payments can be used in a number of ways to process ad hoc, instalment or recurring payments via a secure web-based system.

WPM Software Recurring Card Payments is a stand-alone solution, which can be used in its own right to process recurring card payments or in conjunction with the Card Payment Gateway to process payments in real-time and allow users to select, enter and potentially amend payment details and options.

The front-end of the system allows customers or payers to set up payment instructions via the internet without requiring any intervention from staff. The back-end of the system features a secure web-based administration tool which allows administrators to create and amend payment instructions, generate correspondence and view reports.

The Recurring Card Payment solution provides the tools for your customers to set up various payment plans via the internet such as 'buy now, pay later', pay via fixed instalments or incremental instalments, hire purchase or set up annual subscription, membership payments or donations. These online payment plans can be pre-defined by dynamic logic or left to be decided by the customer.

The system can also cater for the automated update of payment plan instalment amounts dependent on a user's current debt.

HOW RECURRING CARD PAYMENTS CAN BENEFIT YOUR BUSINESS.

Uses dynamic logic and pre-defined templates to offer flexible payment plan options
Payers can set up payment plans based on pre-defined plan templates which can use both defined dates and payment splitting or using dynamic logic. Therefore you can create payment plan options for a customer based on a specific timeframe, payment or payment method. For example specifying that orders over £10,000 can be split into 12 payments over 1 year and orders of under £10,000 to be split into 6 payments over 6 months).

Increase your International market and encourage overseas sales!
As credit cards and overseas debit cards can be used it means that instalment payment is no longer restricted to UK bank account holders and makes it easy for international payers to use.
Reduce your costs with automatically generated email and printed correspondence
The system allows the generation of both email and printed correspondence to be sent to the customer. The email correspondence content and triggers can be configured by staff with appropriate access.

Payment Flexibility
Recurring card payments are not covered by the Direct Debit rules and hence there is no minimum period of notice, and payments can be taken on bank holidays. There is also no requirement for sending an advance notice or other correspondence, although as a matter of best practice WPM recommends you still send these, albeit electronically wherever possible

Payment Service Provider Independent
As with the Card Payment Gateway the Recurring Card Payment system supports multiple PSPs and can seamlessly change from one provider to another to take advantage of preferential rates.

Please Note: Recurring payments are sometimes also referred to as continuous authority payments, recurring billing or similar terms. In essence they refer to the same principle of taking one or more payments at a future date from a payer's card once they have provided you with the authority to do so.

In general it is advisable to process continuous authority / recurring billing transactions using a different merchant account to allow your payment service provider and acquirer to easily identify these as being different from normal e-commerce card transactions.

Some payment service providers / acquirers also require the use of the Visa Account Updater Service or the MasterCard Automatic Billing Updater Service when recurring payments are processed, although the rollout of this is still very patchy.