

Ask HN: What about rechargeable pricing plans? - sktrdie

I live in europe and I can't use Stripe for recurring payments. I didn't want to go with other services because they seem too expensive and quite complicated to setup.<p>So I thought to myself, why not implement a simple rechargeable system, where the user simply pays through a PayPal Pay Now button? 1 month, 3 months, 6 months and 12 months plans. After the period is over, the users are reminded to re-charge in order to continue using my service.<p>From a user perspective this has several positive outcomes:<p>1) The user isn't locked into any month-to-month thing.<p>2) They don't need to store their credit card info anywhere - Stripe and other 3rd party services are PCI compliant, but users feel safer knowing that their CC info is only used for that specific transaction and not being stored somewhere.<p>3) The user is in control. Just like my pre-paid cellphone, I charge it whenever I'm out of credit - it's just simpler than having something that bills me monthly. Just the feeling that a service is connected to my Credit Card makes me feel a little unsafe.<p>Why aren't services being built this way? Am I missing something?
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sehrope
The primary reason that a company wants to get a hold of your payment details
(or at least a way of charging to them; Stripe etc) is to streamline the
charging process when the customer is to be charged again. Plus it has the
added benefit (for the compnay) of having the customer feel like it's a sunk
cost once it's been charged (Netflix monthly access, Amazon Prime yearly
shipping, etc). Think about everything that you get billed for regularly that
you wouldn't necessarily pay for if it were left up to you.

In the case of your prepaid cell phone the cell company knows that you: 1)
Want to be able to make phone calls 2) Want to be able to receive phone calls
3) Want to keep your phone number

I'd wager that you're much more likely to make sure you're prepaid phone is
paid then your Netflix account each month.

All that aside I think it's a very pleasant model from the perspective of the
customer (I personally avoid auto billing whenever possible and even resort to
single use credit card numbers for anything new or remotely shady).

If you have an engaging enough product I see no issue starting off with this
model though I'd recommend eventually migrating to a model where you implement
your own recurring payments.

