epode Posted April 2, 2012 Share Posted April 2, 2012 Hi All, We could really do with some of your help and advice. We're a web hosting provider in the UK looking to speak with other businesses using WHMS and SagePay to help us decide on the best setup for our business. For years we used AWBS billing platform (an alternative to WHMCS) and allowed customers to store card details with us for repeat payments. And this worked fine. We've now moved to WHMCS and have new options - namely SagePay Repeat. As such, we're not sure what the best setup is for our billing and can't decide between the following options ... --- OPTION 1 - SAGEPAY STANDARD This will see customers store their card details in WHMS which allows automated payments to be processed. Advantages - customers can see if card details are stored or not - customers have full control to edit and delete card details - this is the traditional method of payment processing and customers understand it Disadvantages - full PCI Compliance required --- OPTION 2 - SAGEPAY REPEATS This will see customers pay by card and SagePay automatically issues an authorisation code which allows automated payments to be processed. Advantages - card details are NOT stored in WHMCS so a lesser version of PCI Compliance is required Disadvantages - customers not aware that card details will be held - customers have no or very little control to delete or edit card details - renewals are taken without the customer doing anything and this has really angered some people --- With stronger and stricter rules coming in all the time regarding taking payments online, we would really like to be using option 2 however, we tried it and it upset so many customers when renewal payment was taken without them initiating it. Some of our clients think option 2 is bad practice, even underhand and very rude to process payments in this way. However, option 2 it is used more and more by big company names where renewal of a service is required. We would like to know which option you use and how you get on with it and how your clients find it. If you are a host provider then even better, we'd love to chat to you about it. Look forward to hearing from you. Chris 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
netmotiv8 Posted May 15, 2012 Share Posted May 15, 2012 Hi Chris, Why would automated payments anger customers? WHMCS sends invoices and notices in advance indicating payments will be taken automatically if paying by card. I would have thought this would be more convenient for customers, it certainly is for ours. On signup customers have option in WHMCS for card to be stored for future use or not, so the customer does have control. FYI - We use Paypoint as our payment gateway, the only issue we have is when people want to update card details without making a payment as this is not possible (as the cv2 number needs to be verified on a transaction and as you are not allowed to store that number automated payments would fail anyhow when invoice payment time comes around) so if customer needs to update details they need to pay their next invoice manually before the automated system tries to take payment on the due date. This is the only pain for our customers which we are now looking at ways for them to able to update card details without making payment. I think Sagepay tokenised system would do the job, but need to find out if the WHMCS Sagepay modules support it. Cheers Neil 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
epode Posted May 16, 2012 Author Share Posted May 16, 2012 Hi Neil, Thanks for the feedback. Let me start with this ... On signup customers have option in WHMCS for card to be stored for future use or not, so the customer does have control. That wasn't true for us. With SagePay Repeats - it stores the card details even if you ask it not to. Why would automated payments anger customers? Some clients prefer the automated payments - others find it intolerable. We ran the SagePay Repeats module for a month and within that time a handful of clients complained for 2 reasons ... - they didn't want to renew the service - they didn't realise we had captured their card details One client spent a couple of days bitching about it on social networks including Twitter. --- We now use SagePay Standard, it's been running for a few months and we haven't had any complaints. To satisfy the clients who want to subscribe, we use PayPal Subscriptions and also Standing Order payments through the bank. We find this is working for us at the moment and it also reduces our PCI Compliance obligations. Chris 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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