BigCommerce Authorize.net Integration for Seamless Subscriptions

BigCommerce is great for building stores, and Authorize.net is great for accepting payments. When these two combine, the synergy should be high-impact. Unfortunately, for subscription businesses, that’s not true. Merchants running subscription-based stores can witness the painfully obvious gap between the two solutions.

That’s because integrating BigCommerce with Authorize.net directly doesn’t do anything for recurring payments. Many merchants using this integration still handle payments manually, and that prevents them from truly growing.

But fret not! There’s another way merchants can connect these two solutions, and that is through SubscriptionFlow. By using SubscriptionFlow as the connector between BigCommerce and Authorize.net, merchants can build a subscription billing engine that runs automatically.

Starting with the real business problem:

Why do BigCommerce Merchants Struggle with Payments

Subscription-based stores on BigCommerce often struggle with recurring payments as they are not automated. Automation is the most important solution that scaling businesses need. Without automated payments, growth becomes restricted as merchants drown in manual tasks.

These tasks include creating customers’ billing schedules and maintaining them using spreadsheets. They also involve self-drafting invoices, sending them, waiting for payments to flow into your back account, and dealing with failed payments etc.

When these tasks need to be performed for every single one of your customers, it takes your focus away from what truly matters i.e. your store’s growth. The problem with BigCommerce is that it doesn’t offer any tools to deal with these tasks automatically.

The platform’s one-time checkouts work fine, but they are not built for managing the recurring billing logic.

The Gap Between BigCommerce and Authorize.net Explained

Authorize.net is renowned for secure payment processing. Merchants like using this gateway for their BigCommerce stores for faster and smoother transaction completions. However, that is again true for one-time purchases only. While Authorize.net does support recurring payments, it doesn’t do that inside the BigCommerce ecosystem. As a result, these gaps arise:

No recurring billing logic

In the native BigCommerce-Authorize.net setup, merchant can’t define recurring billing schedules for their customers. This means that customers can’t be auto-charged on pre-scheduled intervals (such as monthly billing intervals).

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Since payments are not auto-charged, it falls on the merchants to charge their customers manually on the correct dates. It’s a challenge to manage payment schedules yourself without missing or delaying billing. And of course there is no automated invoicing involved, so invoices also have to be drafted manually.

No dunning mechanism

Strong dunning mechanisms protect merchants from revenue loss. Without a smart payment retry setup, it gets very difficult to recover funds. BigCommerce allows merchants to process only one-time fees using Authorize.net. Merchants have no way of retrying payments using the same gateway.

No subscription lifecycle controls

Controls such as pause, skip, upgrade, renew and prorate are essential to any subscription lifecycle. They give customers greater control over their subscription, and keep them more actively engaged with your products or services.

Options like pausing and skipping cycles are also important churn-combaters that keep customers from cancelling. None of these controls are offered by BigCommerce itself, signaling the need for a third-party solution.

No unified reporting

Both systems show different data. BigCommerce shows data regarding products, orders and customers, while Authorize.net shows transaction histories, payment successes and failures. There remains the need for a platform that can unify all subscription lifecycle data so it can be accessed from a single place.

How SubscriptionFlow Works as the Connector

SubscriptionFlow acts as the point of connection between BigCommerce and Authorize.net. It enables this connection by offering integrations with both platforms. Merchants start with linking SubscriptionFlow to their BigCommerce store. When these platforms are linked, merchants can set up SubscriptionFlow’s hosted checkout to receive payments. Then, they select Authorize.net as their payment gateway in SubscriptionFlow.

When Authorize.net is activated within SubscriptionFlow, it gets activated for the checkout as well. This creates a connection between your BigCommerce store and this payment gateway.

Once this setup is activated, your new customers are redirected to the SubscriptionFlow checkout for payment. When they pay, their payments are smoothly processed through Authorize.net.

And the payments don’t end here, because SubscriptionFlow saves customers’ data and tokenized payment details for automatic recurring billing. So, by enabling this setup, merchants basically let BigCommerce focus on commerce, Authorize.net focus on payments, and SubscriptionFlow oversee subscription management.

Benefits of BigCommerce Authorize.net Integration Powered by SubscriptionFlow

When BigCommerce and Authorize.net are integrated with SubscriptionFlow as the middleman, it offers merchants the way to:

Accept recurring charges with Authorize.net

SubscriptionFlow takes manual burden away by automating charges. Merchants can set up multiple billing schedules of their choice. For example, they may have monthly and quarterly plans. Each customer is charged on exact dates no matter which plan they follow. With this level of automation, it gets impossible to miss or delay charges.

Enable smart dunning

Merchants can also use Authorize.net to process payment retries. Payment retries are a core dunning feature that helps businesses recover their pending funds faster. With this feature, you don’t need to wait for customers to initiate payment—you get to take control instead.

Add customer self-service options

Customers not only get access to controls like pause, skip and upgrade, they get access to a complete self-service portal to perform basic subscription tasks. This portal helps reduce support tickets, as customers can manage most things on their own. These include changing plans (upgrade/downgrade), viewing past invoices and updating payment information.

Access comprehensive subscription reports

Data need not be spread across various systems anymore. Whether it’s order data, customer data or payment notifications, access all of it within SubscriptionFlow. Merchants get to use the software’s intelligent dashboards to view the subscription lifecycle details of each customer. They can check whether a customer has paid, their next payment date and their previous order details, to name a few things.

Plus, store owners can also access subscription analytics. This helps them assess their business performance. For instance, they can analyze their overall sales as well as overall revenue so far. They also get to view their revenue forecasts, churn percentage, customer acquisition rate, and more.

Automate invoice generation

Drafting invoices manually often involves billing mistakes and delays in charging. SubscriptionFlow takes this burden off by handling invoicing on behalf of the merchant, generating correct and professional-looking invoices automatically, transferring them to their respective customers, and tracking real-time payment statuses of each.

Get the best of the BigCommerce—Authorize.net combo. Power this integration with SubscriptionFlow, and automate your payments and subscription management.