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Recently responsible for the billing module needs to be optimized, the domestic website searched a lot and billing related content, found that this part is more inclined to customization, ready-made system modules or do a better system can not search for prototypes, so record some valuable related information

When you are building your Software as a Service (Saas) Minimum Viable Product (MVP), there is a lot of work that needs to be done. It can be difficult to balance It can be difficult to balance this workload.

Oftentimes you are so focused on developing the product that you forget that you still need to sell it to people. to help you get your billing system off the ground to start making revenue, and show what you should be doing when you are ready to scale up.

Subscriptions are key to an effective billing system. This guide is meant to help you get your billing system off the ground to start making revenue, and show what you should be doing when you are ready to scale up.

Subscriptions are key to an effective billing strategy. The ability to charge a credit card on a recurring basis makes payment more efficient for both you and the customer.

To start selling subscriptions to your clients, you need:

If you don't have the development cycles to do

If you don't have the development cycles to do this, you will be stuck with a painful process of sending invoices manually, giving customers access manually, and adding friction to the on-boarding

Offering free trials is considered by many to be one of the best ways to find early adopters of your SaaS.

When someone is given the opportunity to try your product before committing to a SaaS, it's important that you have the development cycles to do this.

When someone is given the opportunity to try your product before committing to a subscription, they are far more likely to become a regular customer.

It is good practice to treat your trial users with the same level of care. It is good practice to treat your trial users with the same level of support and respect as you would your paying customers. Not only are they experiencing your product, they are Not only are they experiencing your product, they are also experiencing the quality of your service.

At the end of the day, you will end up integrating with an external system to handle these use cases. highly recommend looking at Stripe because they have an excellent API to integrate with and a wide range of functionalities.

If you don't want to develop an external system, you can do so with the help of Stripe. If you don't want to develop the integration with Stripe yourself, take a look at Servicebot - It comes fully integrated with Stripe and has great Customer Relationship Management (CRM) functionality so you can better manage your customers and subscriptions from a dashboard.

During your early stages, Y Combinator founder Paul Graham says, " Do things that don't scale. Although this may sound counter-intuitive, this is the best way to grow your customer base before you begin to even think about scaling.

During your early stages, Y Combinator founder Paul Graham says, " Do things that don't scale.

What scaling boils down to is automating the manual processes you've found to be effective at growing your

When you're ready to scale your billing solution, here are a few things to consider:

Automating the processes involved with billing - such as what happens when a user requests a trial, adds a funding source, or requests a cancellation - is

Automating the processes involved with billing - such as what happens when a user requests a trial, adds a funding source, or requests a cancellation - is one of the most important parts of scaling your billing solution.

You should first take a look at how you are currently doing your billing. Identify Identify all the manual processes that currently are a part of your system, like restricting access if trials expire or reactivating accounts after they Identify all the manual processes that currently are a part of your system, like restricting access if trials expire or reactivating accounts after they've been canceled. Once you make that list you can start figuring out how much time is spent performing these and start iterating to reduce the most painful parts. Once you make that list you can start figuring out how much time is spent performing these and start iterating to reduce the most painful parts.

Another big part of automating your process is automating customer outreach based on their status in the billing system.

Customer outreach is key to converting customers from free trials to paid. When starting out, this process is mostly manual. Email people when they sign up, remind them when their trial is ending soon, or ask if they need help getting started.

This is not scalable - you need to

This is not scalable - you need to eventually automate this process, and the best place to focus on is the billing side because so many steps are processed there

To ensure seamless

To ensure seamless communication between your system and the customer, it is important for your system to be tightly integrated with your billing.

One of the best

One of the best ways to automate your businesses with minimum development effort is to integrate with third-parties who have already solved the problems you are facing.

Here are my favorites which I'm using for my own SaaS startup:

Stripe has become the staple of SaaS payment providers. With a developer-friendly API and constant new features, it's a great way to get your business up and running. developer-friendly API and constant new features, I (and countless others) feel it's an obvious integration point.

Some of the Some of the features you can integrate with to automate more of your billing are:

There is much more you can do with Stripe, it should be up to you and your startup

There is much more you can do with Stripe, it should be up to you and your startup 's needs to determine how deep of an integration you need.

The staple of Intercom is the live chat widget that you embed on your site to The staple of Intercom is the live chat widget that you embed on your site to enable communication with your customers. What many people don't realize is that Intercom also provides an automation platform. integrate with Intercom, you can send customized messages to your customer based on what they do with your product.

This allows you to automate the

This allows you to automate the communication with your customer so you don't have to manually email anymore.

Example of intercom outreach automation

Servicebot comes out-of-the-box. Servicebot comes out-of-the-box with a Stripe and Intercom integration. When a customer requests a free trial, Servicebot creates a new trialing subscription and the customer in Stripe is given a free trial. subscription and customer in Stripe and a new user in Intercom, and directs them to a newly-created instance to use.

Intercom will send automated messages with the goal of converting to a paying user while Stripe will manage the subscription automatically.

A good first step to begin scaling Intercom will send automated messages with the goal of converting to a paying user while Stripe will manage the subscription automatically.

A good first step to begin scaling is with automating your billing process. The result of all this will be massive gains in productivity and efficiency that make the effort well worth it.

If you are interested in automating parts of your SaaS business, you should be able to do so.

If you are interested in automating parts of your SaaS billing solution to do things like automate customer on-boarding and connecting business processes to your If you are interested in automating parts of your SaaS billing solution to do things like automate customer on-boarding and connecting business processes to your billing system, Let's talk

In the bankcard acquiring business, the platform docking or "big merchant" model accesses the licensee, retains the merchant settlement funds, and carries out the merchant fund clearing on its own. The so-called "two clearing" behavior. The Bank of China defines two clearing as the standard of "whether or not to carry out merchant fund clearing".

In the network payment business, the platform docking or "big merchant" mode - that is, the customer funds first transferred to the network platform account, and then settled by the network platform to the platform of the second merchant. The accounts or e-wallets opened for customers have payment functions such as recharge, consumption, and cash withdrawal.

Whether it is a bank card acquiring business or a network payment business, the above is called unlicensed payment business.

Two clear refers to: offline use of bank cards for consumption by the pos service provider acquiring, and then settled to the use of its pos service merchants. Because the pos service provider has no clearing qualifications, this approach is a violation.

Network payment mainly refers to: the buyer pays for the goods first to the third-party transaction aggregation platform in the payment institutions to open the account, and then by the platform settlement to the platform of the merchant. Because the third-party transaction aggregation platform has no clearing qualification, this kind of also belongs to the violation. If it is cleared by a payment institution without clearing qualifications, it is also non-compliant. This point should be noted that not all payment institutions have clearing qualifications, the current payment institutions only UnionPay and Netflix have clearing qualifications.

This article discusses the unlicensed operation of the network payment business. The principle of offline acquiring business is the same, only the payment method is different.

The business model for the third-party transaction aggregation (transaction aggregation for sellers and buyers to provide services/goods, etc.), and the money is a large account model (advanced platforms in the payment institutions to open the account, and then through the platform's own settlement to the merchant) this is considered to be unlicensed operation of the payment business is not compliant.

For example, e-commerce platforms such as Pinduoduo and Mushroom Street, comprehensive lifestyle platforms such as Meituan Dianping, and travel platforms such as Ctrip.

This is true regardless of whether the transaction is a physical object, a virtual object, or a service. As long as the transaction object is not the platform's own, the issue of unlicensed payment business is required.

Wallet class function, that is, to be able to recharge, spend, withdraw cash is also unlicensed to operate the payment business. The way through the virtual currency is also non-compliant, because the virtual currency also has a financial value, and can be exchanged for other goods / services, such as getting the get coins.

Strictly speaking, the virtual currency issued by blockchain technology is also non-compliant, firstly, this virtual currency can only be regarded as a kind of virtual goods, and secondly, his principle is the same as that of the virtual currency issued by the platform, which is familiar with the equivalence exchange. The first thing I want to say is that I don't want to be a part of this conversation, but I want to be a part of it.

The government issued the 217th, the attitude is very firm, the strength is also relatively large, the main reasons are as follows:

For the new platform, the problem of unlicensed payment business is a problem that must be taken into account, do not think that the new platform is relatively small, you can play the ball. After the discovery may be will be more serious, this behavior belongs to knowingly, may lead to the platform can not continue to operate.

It is recommended that the new e-commerce platform on-line at the beginning of the solution to the problem of two clear, to avoid a greater loss after the line.

The author summarizes the current programs on the market based on actual experience and compares them for your reference.

Overall, the current market program is divided into four categories. They are banking system solutions, micro-credit sharing programs, three-party payment system solutions, four-party system service provider programs, the author will be introduced separately.

Alipay does not have a billing program, it is estimated that in 2020 for the Alipay system to open the billing function, a short period of time should not be open to the public, the purpose of the same as WeChat, in order to improve the barriers to competition, after all, Alipay and WeChat have their own or invested in the e-commerce platform.

By comparison, we can see that large platforms or platforms with high system requirements can choose a banking system solution. If only do WeChat service number or small program can consider WeChat split function. Those who are more sensitive to costs can choose the four-party service provider system solution, but there is a certain compliance risk. A more popular choice is the three-party payment system solution, with a moderate threshold and no problem with compliance.

I studied the above four programs corresponding to the specific products, respectively, Ping An Bank's "e-commerce witness treasure", micro-credit sub-accounts, Tonglian "cloud business through", investment and financing of the "E account through", investment and financing of the "E account through". "E Account", "E Clearing", "ZhiFuTong" (need to open a physical bank account with taxes). For readers' reference.

E-commerce Witness Bao is Ping An's payment solution for e-commerce platforms, but in reality, customers are not limited to e-commerce, and it can be applied to multiple types of internet trading platforms such as B2CB2BO2O. Launched in 2014, it has served more than 100 e-commerce platforms and industrial chain customers, and can provide a complete set of solutions with more successful cases.

Application Scenarios:

E-commerce Witness Bao Service Platform 2.0 (non-self-operated platform):

1) Sub-account types

When the platform opens sub-accounts, it is divided into merchant sub-accounts and ordinary A merchant sub-account is a collection of funds and only supports transactions between members to be credited to the merchant sub-account.

2) Recharge session

3) Refund session

The WeChat Split Account function is a service that provides a service for distributing funds to merchants after they have completed the successful receipt of orders.

Application scenarios such as: parking lot payment, takeout ordering, college payment, gas station payment, hotel booking and so on.

Specialized merchants refers to: enterprises and institutions, individual businessmen or other organizations that have signed a card acceptance agreement with an acquirer, accept bank cards according to the agreement, and entrust the acquirer to complete the settlement of transaction funds, as well as the natural persons who carry out business activities such as online merchandise trading in accordance with the relevant provisions of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce. Including entity merchants and network merchants 2 kinds.

Entity merchants refers to: through the physical business premises to provide goods or services to the merchants, such as: stores, restaurants, hotels.

Network merchants refers to merchants that provide goods or services based on a public **** network information system, such as self-operated types of e-commerce/service providers, etc.

Network merchants refers to merchants that provide goods or services based on a public **** network information system.

Splits can be made to WeChat Pay's merchant account (non-bank account) or WeChat Pay's user's change account, and can be made to up to 50 split recipients for a single order.

The default freeze period for split funds is 30 days. The split needs to be initiated within 30 days from the date of successful payment of the order. If the split is not initiated within 30 days, the pending split funds will be automatically unfrozen to the split recipients.

The maximum percentage of service provider splits allowed is 30%.

CommuniLink is an established payment provider with 6 payment licenses.

The CloudCom platform is an open platform based on virtual accounts and order payment systems, providing virtual accounts, payment products and fund management services for various business scenarios of merchants.

Tonglian provides virtual accounts and aggregated payment services, and cooperative banks provide fund depository and settlement services. Yunshangtong is more flexible and can choose the cooperative bank according to the location of the partner, and can dock the bank through the branch office or through the headquarters of Tonglian, with a higher degree of customization. If the cooperative bank has not cooperated with Tonglian cycle may be longer, it takes about six months to go online.

Tonglian helps platforms solve the problem of unlicensed payment business through bank depository. There are 3 depository modes: please docking mode I, strong docking mode II, and weak docking mode.

Some of the partners are as follows:

Strong Docking Mode I: The funds are paid into the bank account through Tonglian, the bank carries out fund settlement, and after the settlement funds are transferred to the bank's Tonglian provisioning account, payment is made to the merchant's bank account from Tonglian's provisioning account. There is a problem with this mode of transferring payments (the TDL reserve account), and in the long run, if the policy is tightened, this mode is also non-compliant.

Strong Docking Mode 2: Similar to the Strong Docking Mode, the difference is that the payment is done directly through the bank. There is no problem of transferring payments. It is recommended that platforms use this mode of docking.

Weak Docking Mode: This mode is characterized by the platform basically does not need to develop, and is suitable for platforms with weak development capabilities.

The platform needs to open a depository account in the bank, and the bank will help the platform to settle the funds. The platform will transfer the settlement funds to the provisioning account of Tonglian in the bank through over-the-counter transfer/network bank transfer, and the provisioning account will pay the merchant's bank account.

This model also has the problem of transferring payment on behalf of the merchant, and the funds can only be withdrawn from the account as the only path of withdrawal, which requires more manual operation offline.

There are three types of docking solutions: E-Accounts is a solution that works with TD Tech, E-Clearing is a solution that works with China Merchants Bank, and Jifutong is a solution that works with Fubon Huayi Bank.

Service Logic Diagram:

The service logic diagram of the three docking programs is the same, see the following figure.

The above is the author's understanding of 4 such programs for your reference, if there are problems welcome feedback and discussion. Readers can choose the appropriate payment solution for docking according to the requirements and characteristics of their own platform.

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