Right now we have paypal and credit card support for our subscriptions, but one of our payment providers just launched a new direct debit option that allows us to directly charge customer banks in Europe after getting approval and verifying the bank account. (In Dutch this is called an “Incasso”)
This might be an interesting alternative to paypal or credit cards in countries where they aren’t so common for subscriptions, but given the process is different and the charge process isn’t instant like paypal/credit card, it would mean we need to do a bit of development to enable that.
The process basically goes like this. We need to request a payment 10 days before the subscription is due. You will then get a notification from your bank that we have made an attempt to charge your account, which will be processed 5 days later. Then somewhere in those remaining 5 days (could be 2 but could also be 5 days later), we receive a notification that the payment has been confirmed and your subscription would be renewed.
As account holder you can refuse the charge as soon as you get the notification from your bank, and you also have the option to do a chargeback if you believe the charge was invalid for a certain period afterwards, just like with credit cards.
Should we add that? Is there anyone (in the EU) that would prefer subscriptions to go directly from their bank rather than through PayPal or CreditCard?
Would still like to offer this at some point but it’s a bit more tricky then the average gateway due to the delays (i.e. PayPal and Credit Card are both instantly confirmed).
It’s a web app for alpaca breeders I’ve been working on for a while that will be getting yearly subscriptions. I’d like to offer those with direct debit as a large part of the target group wont have a paypal account or credit card. (Plus, as those subscriptions would be yearly, a two week delay before payment confirmation isn’t a problem)