Reoccurring Billing/Direct Debits

[brianb]

I am a sole trader and would like to offer to my clients a monthly repayment option for the services I provide, I have had a google around and it appears there is a number of companies that can facilitate this (Paypal ect) via a reoccurring billing facility however I am not entirely sure on the process behind failed payments ect

Are they just dealt with in the same manner as a one off payment? At the moment 95% of payments made to me are either in cash or bank transfer to the company account (would my bank be able to arrange this?) so as you can imaging I have a few reservations regarding this however I strongly feel it will vastly improve the business

Any tips or advice would greatly appreciated
Cheers

[maffski]

Have you look at https://gocardless.com/ - takes payments through direct debit, this is the service we use for monthly customers

Card based payments are usually based on 'recurring authority', depending on the issuer some payments will continue even when a card has expired (for a time at least), in other cases they'll fail.

Some card processors will let failed recurring payments be resubmitted automatically after a day or two, but usually it'll just reject again anyway so you'll need to monitor failed payments and contact customers.