How to accept cryptocurrency for subscription and recurring payments

The finance world changed a lot recently because of **cryptocurrencies**. These digital coins, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, rely on decentralized blockchain systems. They’ve **completely altered** how people think about money, investments, and transactions. More and more industries now recognize and use these currencies. Cryptocurrencies went from being a niche idea to a widely accepted and important part of mainstream finance.

One area where crypto has the potential to make a significant impact is in the realm of subscription-based businesses, especially through the implementation of recurring crypto payments. Subscription models, such as Software as a Service (SaaS), have become increasingly popular among both B2B and B2C companies, driving a need for innovative payment solutions that can cater to a global audience.

This article aims to explore the concept of recurring crypto payments, exploring their benefits, best practices, and integration strategies for subscription-based businesses. By the end of this article, you will have a deeper understanding of the potential that recurring crypto payments hold for your subscription-based business and how you can utilize this transformative technology to fuel your growth and success.

What is the difference between subscription and recurring payments?

Both subscription and recurring payments involve automated, periodic payments from the customer to the service or product provider. However, there are subtle differences between the two.

Recurring payments are set up for goods or services with fixed billing periods (e.g., monthly, weekly, daily, or annually), and the customer continues to receive the product or service until they cancel the subscription or the plan expires. This model saves time for both the business and its customers by eliminating the need to place orders or request services repeatedly.

Subscription payments, on the other hand, offer more flexibility for businesses in terms of plan creation and pricing structures. Subscription businesses can customize the length of the plan and billing intervals according to their customers’ needs, allowing them to adapt to market demands more effectively. Like recurring payments, subscription payments involve auto-debiting the customer’s bank account in fixed periods.

In summary, while both methods involve periodic, automated payments, subscription payments offer businesses more flexibility in customizing plans and pricing structures to cater to their customer’s preferences and market trends.

Benefits of accepting cryptocurrency for your subscription and recurring payments

Keeping up with the subscription economy trend, we should delve into the perks of accepting cryptocurrency for your subscription and recurring payments.

Decentralized

A core feature of crypto is its decentralized nature. Strong communities emerge, as there are numerous participants driven to ensure the network thrives. Plenty of these crypto communities boast passionate supporters, resulting in unparalleled engagement compared to other community types. Adopting this community-centric approach can pave the way for merchants to incentivize their customers, encouraging active participation in the communities they establish.

Lower fees compared to traditional payment methods

Standard credit card processing charges usually hover around 2.9% + $0.30 for each transaction, largely because of the multiple intermediaries involved in handling these payments. Crypto, on the other hand, eliminates most, if not all, of these middlemen, making transactions considerably more cost-effective.

Faster settlement

When it comes to credit card payments, it can take days for the funds to appear in a merchant’s account. In contrast, crypto offers an almost instantaneous settlement, providing businesses with a speedy cash flow solution.

Robust Security

The accessibility of credit card numbers and expiration dates allows transactions to be processed by unauthorized users. Despite banks using advanced anti-fraud systems, credit card fraud remains a multi-billion-dollar problem. To safeguard consumers, card issuers offer “chargebacks” that allow reporting and reversal of fraudulent transactions. However, chargebacks contribute to higher credit card fees and risks, often resulting in substantial losses for genuine merchants when they lose dispute resolutions.

No chargebacks

When someone sends Bitcoin or another digital currency, that transaction cannot be reversed. Therefore as the Blockchain system does not need a central authority to verify the transaction, no chargebacks can be issued and the merchant remains the only one that can reverse it deemed necessary with his private key.

Worldwide reach

Current payment processors often come with numerous concealed charges when it comes to currency conversion. With crypto, merchants, and customers can conduct transactions in a universal currency, regardless of their location. If currency conversion becomes necessary, the high liquidity of crypto markets ensures substantially lower fees compared to conventional payment processors.

Protected against censorship

Traditional banks and payment processors often reject legitimate businesses in sectors considered high-risk. Crypto, on the other hand, provides a degree of resistance to censorship, allowing these businesses to sustain their customer relationships even when conventional financial institutions turn them away.

Quick Funds Availability

As an online merchant, you’re probably using a payment gateway or aggregator to accept payments. Regrettably, it takes about 3-5 business days for the funds to reach your account after the customer pays, limiting your immediate access to the money. By enabling crypto payments, your wallet gets credited right away upon receiving the customer’s payment. This allows you to access and utilize your funds promptly.

New client base

Implementing this payment option to your business allows you to reach a new client base, that is young, wealthier, and open to innovative solutions. It is estimated that the number of cryptocurrency owners reached 420 million in January 2023.

Anonymity

To initiate transactions and remain anonymous is а luxury that cannot be afforded by everyone. Reserved for a few only, now it’s close to reaching half a billion users that can protect their privacy while acquiring goods and services.

Challenges of cryptocurrency subscription payments

Of course, there are some important factors to consider before accepting them as a payment option.

Autonomy

We’re all familiar with the automatic debit of bank card subscriptions. You set it and forget it (only to later find out you’ve been charged for a long-forgotten Adobe Photoshop subscription). When it comes to crypto, funds aren’t automatically withdrawn from your clients. While there are programmable invoice solutions for recipients, customers still need to initiate payments each time manually.

Price volatility

Crypto’s volatility makes it less suitable for subscription payments, as the value of a single Bitcoin can experience notable fluctuations within a day or even an hour. That being said, stablecoins effectively address this issue by maintaining a stable value.

Push Transactions vs. Pull Transactions

Cryptos like Bitcoin and Ethereum facilitate a unidirectional payment flow, allowing transactions to be pushed from the sender to the recipient. This design supports the self-sovereign spirit of the crypto world.

However, this approach hinders the conventional subscription process, which involves pulling payments from the sender’s account at predetermined intervals. This constraint is a key reason why crypto subscriptions haven’t flourished despite the massive volume of crypto payment processing.

Keeping Track of Customers

Recurring payments are designed to create a smoother customer experience. But with crypto’s ‘push’ system, customers must initiate each payment, which goes against this convenience. Moreover, this method places control in the customers’ hands, making it challenging for merchants to monitor customers when they cancel or renew their subscriptions.

Complicated change of prices

Currently, subscription-based companies can adjust their subscription prices and charge customers’ cards without specific notification. However, utilizing crypto payments for subscriptions restricts this flexibility. Merchants must explicitly inform customers about a price change before charging the updated amount. This requirement may result in increased customer attrition.

Setting Up Smart Contracts.

Smart contracts are blockchain-based programs that activate when certain conditions are fulfilled, like when a customer pays a certain amount, they gain access to a specific service. However, when a merchant adjusts the price of their product or service, a new contract is needed, making the process rather burdensome.

Crypto payment gateways that accept recurring payments

If you want to start accepting recurring crypto payments, you have to utilize the relevant tools and services. We take a look at the most popular ones which, we at Coin Labz recommend.

BitPay

BitPay’s recurring payment service enables businesses to set up and manage subscription billing for their customers. To configure recurring subscription billing with BitPay, follow these steps:

To set up recurring subscription billing with BitPay, follow these steps:

1. Create a bill with a recurring schedule: From the BitPay merchant dashboard or API, create a bill that specifies the desired recurring schedule, such as weekly, monthly, or yearly. You can also set a custom schedule if using the API.
2. Send the bill to the purchaser: The bill will be emailed to the customer according to the selected schedule. The email will contain a link to generate a BitPay invoice for payment.
3. Pay the bill: The customer can click the link in the email to generate the BitPay invoice, add their buyer information, and proceed with the payment using their preferred cryptocurrency. The invoice will show the payment information, including the amount and cryptocurrency address.
4. Invoice expiry and regeneration: If the invoice expires before the customer sends the payment, they can generate a new invoice from the bill until an invoice for that bill has been paid or the due date has passed.

For example, if you create a bill with a weekly schedule, the customer will receive an email every 7 days with a link to pay the bill. They can click the “Pay Bill Now” button in the email, which will display the bill, allow them to add their information, and then click the “Pay with BitPay” button to generate the invoice containing the payment information.

BitPay will automatically handle future billing cycles by generating new invoices for customers based on the specified intervals and sending email reminders to customers for payment.

You can manage and track active subscriptions from your BitPay merchant dashboard, including viewing subscription details, editing plans, and canceling subscriptions. BitPay’s recurring payment service simplifies the subscription billing process for businesses and their customers, making it easy to accept and manage cryptocurrency payments for subscription-based services.

In addition to the BitPay merchant dashboard, businesses can also set up and manage recurring payments using BitPay’s API. By leveraging the API, you can create bills that are automatically sent to your customers at a defined time interval, such as every 30 days or other custom time frames. This allows for more flexibility and customization of billing cycles using parameters like seconds, minutes, hours, day of the month, month, and day of the week.

By integrating the API, you can further streamline their billing processes, automate invoice generation, and efficiently manage cryptocurrency-based subscription payments.

Coingate

CoinGate’s Recurring Billing enables verified companies on their platform to generate, schedule, and routinely send recurring cryptocurrency invoices through email or a link containing a QR code. This versatile solution can be accessed directly from the account dashboard, requiring no coding or, alternatively, through a custom API integration, allowing businesses to choose the method that best fits their needs.

To implement CoinGate’s Recurring Billing for Crypto, you simply need to sign up for a CoinGate account and then follow their step-by-step guide on setting up recurring billing. This includes integrating the CoinGate API with your platform, configuring subscription plans and billing cycles, and customizing payment pages to suit your brand. With CoinGate’s user-friendly interface and comprehensive support resources, you can quickly and easily incorporate recurring crypto payments into your subscription-based business.

NOWPayments

NOWPayments offers a streamlined and programmable approach to help businesses receive periodic payments in the form of crypto invoices.

With NOWPayments, setting up recurring cryptocurrency invoices is incredibly simple. By following these steps, you can start accepting periodic payments with ease:

Sign up for a personal account.

Go to the “Invoice” section and click the “Create Invoice” button.

Complete the required fields (currency, order ID, and reminder frequency).

Add your subscriber’s email address (multiple addresses can be added).

Wait for your subscriber to confirm the subscription.

NOWPayments takes care of the rest by sending reminders to your subscribers, prompting them to make their payments. This hassle-free solution allows businesses to accept recurring payments with just a few clicks.

By utilizing the NOWPayments API tool, merchants can seamlessly set up subscriptions, leaving them with more time to focus on other essential business processes.

Crypto.com

Crypto.com Pay’s subscription service makes it easy for your business to get regular payments from customers on a recurring basis.

You can set the subscription fee to any type of fiat currency. When each payment is received, it’ll be converted into either fiat or cryptocurrency based on your merchant’s currency settings. Both you and your customers have the option to terminate the subscription whenever they want.

Once you’ve set up the subscription, you’ll be given a URL link to the payment page. You should direct your customers there and they will be guided on how to choose their cryptocurrency and confirm their subscription through the Crypto.com App. Once it is approved, the first billing cycle’s payment will be taken immediately. Subsequent cycles’ payments will then be created and collected automatically (as long as your customers have enough funds in their Crypto.com App wallet).

While the process with Crypto.com is automated and the payment will be processed automatically on the billing date without further authorization from the client (until they cancel the subscription), to take advantage of that, your clients need to use the Crypto.com app, which is a huge drawback for most businesses.

You can read our comprehensive guide about cryptocurrency payment gateways here if you need more info on the topic.

More things to consider before accepting subscription payments in cryptocurrency