Unlock Subscription Billing on MyFatoorah Without Rebuilding Your Stack

MyFatoorah is trusted throughout Middle East for its reliable payment infrastructure. It makes payment acceptance easy for merchants. However, the same can’t be said about recurring payments. Businesses that sell subscriptions know that accepting payments is not their only challenge. Their real challenge lies in subscription management.

MyFatoorah is a stellar payment gateway, but not enough to carry out subscription billing or management. Subscription sellers in MENA need a platform that can bridge this gap for them without requiring them to change their payment gateway. SubscriptionFlow makes that possible. It unlocks full recurring billing capabilities on top of MyFatoorah so that your existing payment setup doesn’t get disrupted.

What MyFatoorah Can and Can’t Do

MyFatoorah is popular in the MENA region because it aligns with the local payment laws and provides great regional payment coverage. These are things it excels at:

• It supports secure payment processing across 8 MENA countries including Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and UAE.
• It supports the currencies used in these regions and the local payment methods popular there.
• It makes payment collections quick for merchants.
• It works well for one-time payments and simple recurring payments (varies by setup).

Now coming to what MyFatoorah can’t do. Since it is essentially a payment gateway, MyFatoorah can’t manage subscriptions for you, or automate recurring billing. These are some major features businesses need for running subscriptions, but which MyFatoorah doesn’t support:

• Recurring billing cycles (with different frequencies)
• Customer’s ability to change subscription plans instantly
• Payment retries, reminders or other dunning tools
• Customer lifecycle tracking (subscription status, plan, renewal date, activity, etc.)

What Challenges Subscription Businesses Face with MyFatoorah Alone

MyFatoorah is a strong payment foundation for businesses, but it doesn’t offer subscription management. When businesses try to layer subscriptions on it, they face these challenges:

Manual recurring payments setup

MyFatoorah works well for one-time payments, but subscriptions need clients to be charged on a recurring basis. This means that if there are no automatic recurring payments available, merchants have to trigger payments via MyFatoorah manually. This can be through payment forms or links that merchants send to customers. However, this is a slow and unreliable method of collecting payments.

No built-in subscription logic

Subscription logic means that your solution can cater to the changes that are expected in a subscription lifecycle. For example, subscribers can change their plans whenever they want, billing amounts can change, and plans can need pauses. MyFatoorah isn’t built to see to these processes.

Failed payment handling gaps

MyFatoorah’s job is to process payments, not to trigger or initiate them. Therefore, it doesn’t have the capability of retrying failed payments on its own. So, merchants cannot auto-collect recurring payments that have failed. They have to rely on other means to prompt customers to pay again manually.

No visibility into subscription lifecycle

In MyFatoorah, businesses can only see their transaction activity. They cannot view other metrics that are equally important for subscriptions. That includes customer lifecycle tracking as well. Businesses can’t know which customer is on which plan, what their subscription status is currently or whether they are active, reactivated or churned, unless they track each one manually.

The Better Approach: Combine Payments with Subscription Management

Subscription businesses can’t have recurring payments and manual subscription management working in isolation. The best approach to overcome this scenario is by combining MyFatoorah payments with subscription management. This is possible through dedicated subscription management software like SubscriptionFlow.

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When MyFatoorah is connected with a platform that offers subscription management, businesses can access true billing intelligence. They can:

Automate recurring billing

Merchants can charge their customers on a monthly basis, yearly basis or any other customized duration. When billing cycles are set and activated in subscription management software, the software triggers MyFatoorah to fetch payments. In a subscription setup, MyFatoorah is prompted to collect payments on a repeat basis, creating a recurring revenue stream.

Prorate bills

In the last section, we mentioned subscription logic. Proration is an important part of that. When your customer changes their subscription plan at any point in time, they expect an upgraded invoice to be sent their way. This invoice contains their prorated bill, i.e. the bill that has been adjusted according to their new plan. This automatic proration can be accessed by merchants through subscription management software.

Make smart payment retries

Payment retries can be facilitated through this combination. Subscription software is able to identify failed payments and initiate a recharge of the payment to your customer through your payment gateway, i.e., MyFatoorah. This saves merchants from awkward “your payment is pending” calls, and also save customers from the manual effort of paying again.

Unlock two or more billing models

The basic subscription model involves charging customers the same amounts every month. Some businesses need more advanced models depending on the nature of their products and revenue strategy. For example, the usage-based model. Problem is, these other models need careful billing calculation which is hard to get right manually, especially at scale.

But subscription management software implements such models seamlessly. It calculates error-free charges following the billing model specified, and then charges customers through MyFatoorah.

Support recurring billing in multiple currencies

MyFatoorah supports various Middle Eastern currencies. And subscription management software allows easy billing in these currencies as well. Customers are auto-charged each month in the currency of their country. This makes payment localization easier too.

Track and report revenue

Another big advantage of this combination is that businesses become capable of tracking their revenue. They can see which customer and plan bring how much revenue each month, and analyze their most and least profitable products.

SubscriptionFlow Extends MyFatoorah’s Capabilities

SubscriptionFlow works harmoniously with MyFatoorah. While MyFatoorah processes payments from all over the Middle East, SubscriptionFlow becomes the subscription management layer that backs your business. This combination gives you easy access to subscription billing, and creates a complete system that:

• Automates all recurring payments
• Supports different billing schedules
• Allows multiple billing models
• Takes care of payment retries automatically
• Tracks and reports revenue
• Manages the full subscription cycle in one place

None of these processes require manual efforts, everything runs automatically. When MyFatoorah and SubscriptionFlow are combined, here’s how the workflow goes:

• Customer signs up for your product
• Their initial payment is processed through MyFatoorah
• When payment succeeds, this customer is created as a subscriber in SubscriptionFlow
• SubscriptionFlow sets this customer up for recurring payments
• When a payment date arrives, SubscriptionFlow triggers MyFatoorah to attempt charge
• Thus, each recurring payment is processed through MyFatoorah
• Every successful payment triggers SubscriptionFlow to renew the customer’s plan

Why is SubscriptionFlow the Smarter Choice?

Here is why it makes sense to use SubscriptionFlow with MyFatoorah:

Merchants don’t need to re-build their tech stack

The biggest advantage is that merchants don’t need to replace MyFatoorah with another gateway to make subscription management possible. They also don’t need to do heavy integrations or technical work to connect MyFatoorah with SubscriptionFlow. SubscriptionFlow has made this integration as easy as it can get. Hence, there’s no reliance on any third parties involved. Just SubscriptionFlow and MyFatoorah working in sync.

Faster time to market

Because the integration is quick, it takes merchants lesser time to set up their subscription billing infrastructure. They can launch faster and start collecting payments seamlessly.

End-to-end subscription lifecycle management

Every aspect of a subscription lifecycle is managed and monitored in SubscriptionFlow. Renewals, proration, plan switches, pauses, cancellations, revenue reports, customer statuses data on every process can be accessed with just a few clicks.

Automatic invoices are supported

Another key advantage is automatic invoicing. When MyFatoorah processes any payment and that succeeds, SubscriptionFlow creates an invoice for your customer. It is sent to them via email automatically as their payment receipt. Alternatively, merchants may also send invoice first and deduct payment later.

Customer portal is offered

Your customers’ subscription experience is made smoother with the help of customer portal. Each customer has access to their own portal where they can see and change their major subscription settings. Such as pause, resume, cancel or change plan. They can also access their payment record through this portal.

Do you also use or are planning to use MyFatoorah to sell in MENA? Combine MyFatoorah with SubscriptionFlow to access smooth subscription billing, and reduce time to market.