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Automatically Debit from a Customer's Bank Account

Members of the ISP-Marketing list discuss this sure-fire method of getting subscribers to pay on time. But opinions and experiences vary widely. It's not necessarily easy to implement, and many subscribers won't use it.

[May 15, 2001]

On the ISP-Marketing list in May, TB queried,

"Can anyone suggest how we can get set up to automatically withdraw our monthly fee from a customer's bank account so that we don't need to invoice our residential customers each month and wait for payment? We just got set up to accept credit cards, but not all customers are willing to use a credit card."

BH warned that setting up the arrangements can be time consuming:

"As I understand it, each bank is different: you will have to make arrangements with each individual bank."

CR disagreed, observing that most merchant services providers should be able to take care of it:

"Any merchant services company can provide you with the ability to do recurring billing."

Others shared their favorite solutions:

[DS offered] "We use CheckMAN check printing software, and print checks on several of our customers' bank accounts—with their permission, of course."

[DH advised] "Use VersaCheck: quick, easy, painless, and best of all, cheap."

BL suggested it's just not worth the effort:

"We did automatic debits for a while, and finally gave it up as too much trouble. 2% of our customers signed up for it, the rest didn't want it; it was a lot more costly to us than credit cards; and tracking the bounced automatic debits was driving us crazy."

— End