Account updater like Stripe, Braintree, and others have

[shoelessjoe]

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?

[tgarnett]

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.

[shoelessjoe]

@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.

[shoelessjoe]

@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!

[shoelessjoe]

@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?

[shoelessjoe]

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?

[john-market]

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.

[MattM14]

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.

[RichardH]

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

[normlawr]

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.

[simeyla]

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