Subscriptions

Subscriptions: Place of payment, collection and Payment Gateways

If you are charging or going to charge your subscribers through a payment gateway like Stripe, Razorpay, Paypal, or others, the place of origin of payment and collection matter a lot. Some other factors are compliance, taxation, and charges. We have taken India and US as a case and listed the payment gateways that can help you out! Remember, auto-debit just started in India in 2019. A few have upgraded to provide a scalable solution where you actually can auto-debit users like you pay for Netflix or Hotstar which means subscribers provide card information only once. So, here’s a table that helps you reason out what works for your subscribers:

Now you know which payment gateways are pertinent to you! Also, a common thread across different gateways, if you want to charge subscriptions, is that you have to integrate through their APIs. Generally, the steps are:

You create a plan highlighting frequency, amount of payment, etc You add subscribers through the APIs or via a dashboard for that plan The gateway or you notify the subscribers to pay once and then auto-debits from thereon. You would not be able to use the same link for multiple users. One link, one user.

At Paperr.io, we eliminated the second step i.e. you create a plan and get a url to put in your website or whatsapp or any other channel. That’s it. One link, many users. Why sweat over APIs or adding customers through a dashboard everytime. It takes time and is not scalable.

Coming back to the payment gateways if you are collecting payments in India, lets evaluate different payment gateways for you:

Extra GST will be charged (18%) and 1% on Amex is charged. Also, international transactions incur more fees depending on INR conversion rates.

Consequently, we find Razorpay a much better option if you want to integrate their APIs or you can try Paperr.io. Remember, single link, many subscribers!