Account Updater: keep customers happy, keep payments flowing

Customers store their card details with you to make checkout faster next time they buy from you or streamline subscription or other recurring payments. But if they get a new card (because, for example, their old one expired, or was lost or stolen), how do you make sure their stored details get updated?

Perhaps customers will think to update their details themselves, or you'll contact them to ask them to enter the new information. Either way, it's a hassle they could do without. In the meantime, they could experience checkout friction or interrupted subscriptions, while you could find yourself dealing with payment disruptions or lost sales.

Account Updater from Authorize.net helps you overcome these issues for Visa and other selected credit cards. Each month, it checks for new cards and automatically updates stored details with any new cards it discovers.

If you're an Authorize.net customer using Customer Information Manager (CIM) or Automated Recurring Billing (ARB), Account Updater can be a valuable addition to your payment solution, helping reduce effort and friction for customers by automatically updating their card details.

Think about it from your customer’s perspective. Imagine you lost your credit card and have to cancel it and request a replacement. What happens the next time you go to your gym? If you haven't updated your gym membership account with your new card details, you may be turned away. Beyond being disappointing, a poor experience like that could make you decide to join a different gym instead.

If, on the other hand, your gym used a service that automatically updated stored card details, you could have enjoyed your gym session as usual, and not even thought about switching to a new gym. Your experience would be seamless, and your gym provider would have kept you as a loyal customer.

Account Updater offers a range of benefits for you and your customers:

• Increased authorization approvals, reduced costs. With card information updated monthly, you can avoid unnecessary payment interruptions and declines, as well as the cost and effort of reminding customers to update their stored information.
• Happier customers, enhanced customer retention. For customers, the friction caused by disrupted payments or the need to manually update their card details goes away. So they don't miss out on services, and the risks to your business of non-payment or subscription cancellation are minimized.
• No update, no charge. Each month, you're charged only for the cards that are successfully updated. Over time, the savings you make with automated card updates will typically far outweigh the costs.

Community non-profit Dollar for Portland uses Account Updater for automated card updates that keep regular donations coming in. Jared Walker, the organization's founder, says: “Account Updater is the game changer for Dollar for Portland. We would have people that would sign up and then their card would get lost or stolen or expired, and we would never hear from them again."

You can get started with Account Updater at any time. Why not do so today, before your peak season hits? That way, you can capture returning shoppers and be sure that subscription payments will run smoothly.

If you already use Authorize.net's CIM or ARB, it's easy to add Account Updater:

1. Log in to your Authorize.net account.
2. Under Tools, click on Account Updater.
3. Click on the Sign Up Now button.

If you're not yet an Authorize.net customer, simply sign up with us and activate Account Updater.

If you'd like to know more about Authorize.net, and how we can help streamline payments for you and your customers, visit our website or call us on 1-888-323-4289.