topic Re: Account updater like Stripe, Braintree, and others have in Integration and Testing

Account updater like Stripe, Braintree, and others have

shoelessjoe — Mon, 21 Jul 2014 22:51:49 GMT

Hi there -- has anyone found a way to automatically update recurring billing subscriptions on Authorize.net? Visa has this program http://usa.visa.com/merchants/grow-your-business/processing-solutions/account-updater.jsp and Mastercard has this program http://www.mastercard.us/merchants/automatic-billing.html.

The idea is basically that cards that would fail because a new card has been issued, expiration, etc. get automatically updated so they work correctly.

We're currently losing 10%+ of our subscriptions each month and need to figure out how to use account updater. I know Stripe, Braintree, Chase, et al offer this, but we haven't been able to find it within Authorize. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Re: Account updater like Stripe, Braintree, and others have

RichardH — Wed, 23 Jul 2014 23:57:55 GMT

Hello @shoelessjoe

@shoelessjoe wrote:

Hi there -- has anyone found a way to automatically update recurring billing subscriptions on Authorize.net?

Currently there isn't an account updater service for Authorize.Net using the Visa and MC tools you mention. However, we do have an open enhancement request for similar functionality.

Are you using Automated Recurring Billing (ARB)?

Richard

Re: Account updater like Stripe, Braintree, and others have

shoelessjoe — Wed, 06 Aug 2014 15:15:15 GMT

@RichardH -- yes, we're using ARB. The number of cards that fail each month as a result of not having account updater in place is massive. And it really makes Authorize.net not competitive compared with those who offer it. If there's one feature that can increase ARB revenue by 5-15% and all your competitors have it but you don't, that's a significant problem. What is the plan around rolling this out?

Re: Account updater like Stripe, Braintree, and others have

RichardH — Wed, 06 Aug 2014 15:34:17 GMT

We recently added a new ARBGetSubscriptionLIstRequest API method to get a list of subscriptions with cards expiring this month. This would allow you to proactively contact those customers to update their card details to avoid any disruption in service. See the full details in the ARB XML Guide.

ARBGetSubscriptionListRequest

Element	Description	Format
searchType	Required. cardExpiringThisMonth subscriptionActive subscriptionInactive subscriptionExpiringThisMonth
sorting	Contains sorting information.
orderBy	Order of transactions in response: id name status createTimeStampUTC lastName firstName accountNumber (ordered by last 4 digits only) amount pastOccurences
orderDescending	true, false, 1 or 0.	Boolean
paging	Contains information about list pages.
limit	1-1000. The number of subscriptions per page.
offset	1-100000. The number of pages.

Re: Account updater like Stripe, Braintree, and others have

shoelessjoe — Fri, 08 Aug 2014 15:01:53 GMT

Thanks, Richard. We'll take a look. What's the plan with account updater? When should we expect that to go into production?

Re: Account updater like Stripe, Braintree, and others have

shoelessjoe — Fri, 15 Aug 2014 16:27:08 GMT

@RichardH any word on when we should expect account updater to go into production?

For your recurring billing customers, it's hard to imagine any more important feature that could have a more immediate impact on revenue.

Thanks!

Re: Account updater like Stripe, Braintree, and others have

RichardH — Fri, 15 Aug 2014 17:45:31 GMT

Unfortunately I don't have any information about a potential release date.

My best suggestion is to subscribe to this thread as we'll provide updates here if we get more information.

To subscribe, click Topic Options at the top of this thread and then select Subscribe. You'll then receive an email once anyone replies to your post.

Thanks,

Richard

Re: Account updater like Stripe, Braintree, and others have

shoelessjoe — Tue, 19 Aug 2014 03:55:43 GMT

@RichardH thanks. I was told by support to raise this issue on this forum -- that this was the best way to get the attention of Authorize product managers and developers.

It sounds like this is not actively being developed, which is surprising given the potential benefits it has for your clients. It's hard to imagine anything that would serve ARB customers better than getting up to 10% of their failing subscriptions to work successfully.

Can you please clarify how it's possible that this isn't a top priority? (Also considering that your competitors now offer it.)

Thanks.

Re: Account updater like Stripe, Braintree, and others have

RichardH — Tue, 19 Aug 2014 14:20:28 GMT

As I mentioned before, if you are using ARB then you can use the ARBGetSubscriptionList to obtain a list of profiles that will expire and take the appropriate action.

For an account updater feature, I can confirm that its one of many features requested by merchants on our priority list. However, we don't have any details for a delivery date . If you subscribe to this thread, you will be notified when there is an update. At this time, that is the best information I can provide.

Richard

Re: Account updater like Stripe, Braintree, and others have

shoelessjoe — Wed, 20 Aug 2014 16:17:31 GMT

@RichardH, thanks. I'm less concerned about cards that expire than those that are being canceled by credit card companies because of situations like the one at Target.

Can you give me a sense of other ARB development that's going on right now that's considered to be greater priority than something that could increase your customers' revenue by 10%?

As we consider whether to continue with Authorize, it would be helpful to know whether this huge problem in the credit card world is being taken seriously.

Thanks!

Re: Account updater like Stripe, Braintree, and others have

tgarnett — Thu, 21 Aug 2014 17:05:27 GMT

To bump the thread, this feature would also be very useful for us. We use the CIM API so we'd like any support for this feature to be included in there as well as ARB API. We're actually in the process of getting quotes from some other gateway providers (we're large enough to get some discount off the usual published rates of Stripe etc.) for at least our new business and this issue would be one of the driving reasons to switch.

Re: Account updater like Stripe, Braintree, and others have

shoelessjoe — Fri, 22 Aug 2014 14:56:50 GMT

@tgarnett we've also been talking with Stripe, Braintree, and Recurly -- all of whom offer account updater. We also found that while they advertise fixed rates, you can actually get pretty deep discounts on them if you have some volume.

Thanks for supporting this thread. Our hope is that Authorize.net will add this critical feature so we don't have to integrate with a new Gateway.

Re: Account updater like Stripe, Braintree, and others have

shoelessjoe — Tue, 26 Aug 2014 16:41:10 GMT

@RichardH to follow up on the last request...

Can you give me a sense of other ARB development that's going on right now that's considered to be greater priority than something that could increase your customers' revenue by 10%?

Thanks!

Re: Account updater like Stripe, Braintree, and others have

shoelessjoe — Tue, 02 Sep 2014 15:53:59 GMT

@RichardH, not sure if you're missing the thread, but the non-response seems to suggest that Authorize doesn't take this issue seriously, even though your ARB merchants are losing upwards of 10% of monthly revenue as a result. Can you please confirm one way or another?

Re: Account updater like Stripe, Braintree, and others have

shoelessjoe — Thu, 04 Sep 2014 19:52:26 GMT

For those following this thread, Krebs on Security just reported on the Home Depot breach saying:

"The Target breach impacted just shy of 1,800 stores, lasted for approximately three weeks, and resulted in the theft of roughly 40 million debit and credit card numbers. If a breach at Home Depot is confirmed, and if this analysis is correct, this breach could be much, much bigger than Target."

Question for Authorize.net ARB customers is: what percentage of your revenue is at risk and what is Authorize.net doing to help you protect it?

Re: Account updater like Stripe, Braintree, and others have

john-market — Sun, 18 Jan 2015 00:31:27 GMT

This is a critical feature for us as well.

We contacted Authorize.net about this 2 years ago and no one we spoke to even had any idea what we are talking about.

I am glad this discussion is taking place. We've grown substantially since then and this has become a make or break feature. If Authorize.net cannot deliver this, we must switch.

Re: Account updater like Stripe, Braintree, and others have

MattM14 — Mon, 26 Jan 2015 16:16:22 GMT

This is also a critical feature for us. I recently joined my current company which was already Authorize.net. At my previous employer we were using CyberSource and thier account updater feature. It was a critical feature that helped mitigate unnecssary churn and manual customer contact.

If this feature is not set to be released soon we will likely move to a provider that offers this service.

Re: Account updater like Stripe, Braintree, and others have

RichardH — Mon, 26 Jan 2015 16:37:19 GMT

Hello @MattM14

Thanks for the feedback. We are tracking requests for this in our product ideas forum. You can add your vote there: http://community.developer.authorize.net/t5/Ideas/Account-Updater/idi-p/48277

Re: Account updater like Stripe, Braintree, and others have

normlawr — Thu, 15 Jun 2017 10:54:44 GMT

It seems this thread has not updated to the awesome news that Account Updater is NOW (June 2017) available at authorize.net - I just signed up for it and am looking forward to this being a game changer for my membership site.

Just sign into your account and go to Recurring Billing. The link is there to sign up.

It has not run yet for this month, but evidently it is set up to run once a month.

Re: Account updater like Stripe, Braintree, and others have

simeyla — Thu, 15 Jun 2017 19:42:42 GMT

I'm excited but very skeptical about the Account Updater as it currently exists.

For many it should work as-is but if you have a large existing subscriber base you need to (currently) be aware of the following limitations :

It will run for ALL your payment profiles. If you have profiles that represent cancelled customers then the account updater will run and you will be charged $0.25 for each successful update. You may want to delete all old profiles first.
If customers cancel their card they may assume it won't run anymore for anybody who has it. So depending upon what you're selling you will need to consider whether you ought to contact the customer or not. If you're mailing something to someone whose profile expired a year ago they may have moved house by now - so don't forget to consider the human and business model factors.

An API is coming but not available yet.

There is another thread going where support is providing helpful responses - but at this time the feature just isn't mature enough and you need to be aware of its limitations. I'm personally anxiously hoping for quick improvements but I may choose to delete old profiles and just get it running instead of waiting (months?) for them to improve it.

https://community.developer.authorize.net/t5/Ideas/Account-Updater/idi-p/48277/page/2#comments