Stuck With One-Time Payments on NMI? How Shopify Merchants Enable Subscriptions

Many Shopify merchants struggle with one-time payments on NMI. This problem results in missed steady, recurring revenue, which is a major source of income for many businesses. To encounter this challenge, businesses look out for smart, dedicated subscription solutions that can turn one-off sales into a reliable, predictable income.

Converting one-time purchases into a subscription seems simple, but managing recurring payments has its own challenges. To generate predictable revenue while ensuring customer satisfaction, one needs the right tools and approach. And this is exactly what SubscriptionFlow can deliver. It allows Shopify merchants to process recurring payments with NMI using its modern payment system, without overhauling their existing payment systems.

Why Subscriptions Fail on Shopify with NMI

Shopify merchants who rely on NMI as their payment gateway encounter a frustrating pattern. One-time purchases work perfectly, but businesses are unable to process subscription payments. Merchants identify this problem after launching recurring products, memberships or payment plans. The errors are confusing, and support tickets bounce between platforms. These problems make it feel like NMI is the root of the problem. 

But the truth that most merchants don’t realise is: NMI is not the problem, Shopify Checkout is. Shopify’s native checkout doesn’t support NMI card tokenisation and vaulting, which is mandatory for subscriptions. SubscriptionFlow fills this gap between Shopify and NMI by enabling full subscription functionality. With this, merchants can tokenise credit cards directly with NMI, store payment tokens and automatically charge customers after each billing cycle. 

Role of Tokenisation in Smooth Subscription Billing

Tokenisation is a critical concept in subscriptions. For any successful subscription or recurring billing, customers enter their credit card details first. The payment gateway then creates a card token (converts credit card details into a secure reference number or id). Instead of storing highly sensitive card details, the payment gateway stores the token. The token is reused to charge for future billing cycles. 

Payment Tokenisation helps businesses by:

• PCI DSS compliance to avoid penalties 
• Enhancing security to build customer trust 
• Simplify data management to streamline payment processing 
• Protects sensitive data by reducing the risk of fraud
• Save the brand’s reputation by limiting the scope of data breaches  

The Challenges of One-Time Payments on NMI

With one-time payments, businesses face several hurdles that leave lasting impacts on their growth. For businesses that want to generate revenue through subscriptions, face problems like:

Manual Workflows

Without automated recurring billing, the workload increases. Merchants manually charge customers, track payments, and manage failed transactions. 

Customer Friction

When customers re-enter their payment details each month, it causes frustration and increases the likelihood of a pause in purchases. This ultimately causes a loss of revenue.

Limited Revenue

One-off payments make the forecast of revenue less predictable and obscure the ability to understand customer retention trends.

You have done your part.
Let SubscriptionFlow take it from here!

Let us help your business grow with our powerful
subscription management software.

Schedule a Demo

Risk of Errors

Manual management of subscriptions is highly prone to errors when dealing with subscriptions. Repeated mistakes can erode customer interest and trust in the business.

How does SubscriptionFlow help?

SubscriptionFlow is built to overcome the aforementioned challenges. It enables Shopify sellers to process recurring payments without making any modifications, even on payment processors such as NMI that are designed for one-time transactions. 

Here’s how it works:

• Recurring Payments: SubscriptionFlow keeps customer payment information in the form of a token, so you can charge them without having to store their sensitive information.
• Easy Shopify Integration: No complex configurations and coding experiences needed. You can directly offer subscription products to your Shopify products. 
• Flexible Subscription Plans: Have weekly, monthly, quarterly, or custom plans for your products. With SubscriptionFlow, you can even provide free trials and introductory prices. 
• Automated Billing and Reminders: Customers are billed automatically. You can also set a reminder on cards that are about to expire to prevent revenue leakage. 
• Analytics and Reporting: Monitor subscription growth, churn, and revenue metrics all under one roof. 

SubscriptionFlow eliminates the hassle of processing recurring payments and allows you to concentrate on expanding your business. 

How Shopify Merchants Use SubscriptionFlow

Let’s break down a few real-world ways Shopify merchants leverage SubscriptionFlow to boost recurring revenue:

Subscription Boxes

A lot of Shopify stores sell curated goods in boxes, including snacks, beauty and fitness products. Rather than leaving the reorder to the customers at the end of every month, SubscriptionFlow allows merchants to offer recurring subscriptions. This keeps the deliveries constant and revenue predictable. 

Replenishable Products

Products that customers use on a regular basis, such as supplements, skincare, or household items, are best suited for subscriptions. SubscriptionFlow makes the process fast so customers can access new bundled products before they run out. This ensures merchants a steady income. 

Membership Access

Some stores have exclusive content, VIP deals or premium access. SubscriptionFlow provides membership-based subscriptions that are automatically paid to continue the customer’s access.

Tiered Subscription Plans

You can also introduce flexible pricing models with SubscriptionFlow, offering plans like basic, premier, or even VIP-level subscriptions to the customers. It boosts the average revenue per user.

Best Practices to Enable Subscriptions on Shopify 

To make the most out of the SubscriptionFlow to enable subscriptions on Shopify, follow these best practices:

• Start Small: Identify which products are best sellers. Start subscriptions for those most consumable products. 
• Give Incentives: Subsidise subscriptions, free trials or exclusive offers. Apply discount vouchers to attract customers. 
• Be Transparent: Clarify billing periods and cancellation policies to customers.
• Monitor Analytics: Follow up on churn, revenue, and customer engagement to optimise your offerings.
• Test Payment Flows: Make sure automatic billing functions and notifications are received by customers.

Factors to Consider When Choosing Shopify Subscription Management App

The selection of an appropriate Shopify subscription management app is highly significant when you are using NMI as a payment gateway. To avoid any inconvenience, it is recommended that you take these factors into consideration.

Direct NMI Tokenisation Support

The software should be able to tokenise credit cards via NMI, not just process one-off payments.

Compatible with Recurring Billing 

The solution should have built-in recurring billing logic to support subscriptions on Shopify.

Ability to Bypass Shopify Checkout Limitations

The software, therefore, needs to be able to handle payments outside of native low since Shopify’s checkout system fails to support NMI vaulting.

Full PCI-compliant Checkout and Payment Flow

The entire tokenisation and billing process should comply with PCI standards to protect sensitive payment data. 

Making NMI Subscriptions Work the Right Way

Running subscriptions on Shopify with NMI isn’t possible, but it does require the right technical foundation. To establish successful recurring billing, it is important to have proper NMI tokenisation, secure token storage, and a checkout flow that works around Shopify’s native limitations. 

Solutions like SubscriptionFlow are built to address all challenges merchants face in running automated subscriptions without any disruptions. When subscriptions are core to your business, choosing a solution that meets the criteria makes all the difference.