Ask HN: Why most SaaS companies are leaving money on table | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why most SaaS companies are leaving money on table

3 pointsInGodsName2 comments

In SaaS subscription billing, some developers simply add stripe and are done with it.

In many countries, people don't have debit or credit cards with high transaction limits. Sometimes monthly limit is like $200 and if someone's paying $400 for a product then charge doesn't go through.

I think this is leaving 20% of money on the table which comes through other payment methods like cryptos including bitcoin, wire transfer (manual), skrill, western union, yandexpay, webmoney which is very popular in Soviet block countries.

Why there isn't any subscription management product which supports all of these gateways?

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Is 20% just a guess?

SaaS companies want to automate as much as possible. If there's a payment provider offering to cash in checks or make wire transfer less of hassle then that's good. At some point through it gets too complex to support 3-4 payment providers. So most just choose one unless they really see "money on the table", which would require customers to ask for a certain payment method.

https://www.bspayone.com/DE/en/services/payments is a German company offering some methods you've likely never heard of, even paying cash at a supermarket (you receive a barcode, then you pay online by scanning it with your mobile phone).

There must be 100s in the world. Here's a list what Spree Commerce supports, payone isn't even on the list https://github.com/activemerchant/active_merchant#supported-...

I think those subscription box startups are going to blow up and dry away with the rest of the 'Bezzle' when the economy slows down.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/bitcoin-falls-vi...

GE used to run ads saying it was as cool a place to work for young people as those subscription box startups and now we know it was part of the Bezzle.

Even reputable companies (with something to lose) like Amazon can't seem to stop billing me for Music Unlimited.

Once consumers discover that they only way they can stop a rouge subscription service from billing them forever is to change their credit number they won't get any more and they will think twice before moving existing subscriptions to the new credit card number -- which will end them.

If there is a need for something it is serving the need for customers be able to cancel their subscriptions. Some kind of service specialized for recurring payment that lets you end them with one click and no harassment.

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