Trials on prepaid CCs (PPS to REV)
 

Hi!

Ok so I see a trend where sponsors switch PPS sales to REV when the surfer uses a prepaid credit card. But why do they allow trials on prepaid CC's?

Not sure if the CC processor sees if the sale is made via a prepaid or not before actually charging the card, so that could be one reason.. But wouldn't it be just better to decline those sales, because someone with a prepaid wont renew (at least I havent seen one which rebilled).

From the sponsor perspective I see that they are maybe hoping for an upsell from the user via a different (regular) CC, but still most wont do shit and just grab as much content as they can for $1.

So wouldnt it be better to decline the sale and tell them that they can pay only for 1/3/6/12 month access and no trial (unless they dont use a different non prepaid cc)?

Trials are nothing more than a good prequalified lead (if you ask me) - but that is good.

It would be stupid not to allow trials on prepaid CC's because a lot of people reload the card with funds, so it's almost as valid as a regular CC customer (if from a first world country)

I'd also like to know why this is becoming more of an issue lately.. especially on Paper Street Cash... 30% of my sales are PrePaid Credit Cards which make me a whopping 44 cents!!

It hasn't been much of an issue on other networks.. Nasty Dollars used to do this as well but i think they have stopped taking PPCC?

So checked a few prepaid sales and only one of them rebilled, but that rebill was refunded.. one even got refunded his trial lol

If the people using prepaids would rebill like surfers with normal CC's do, then sponsors wouldn't switch those sales to REV and would leave it as normal PPS..

Prepaid cards are non re loadable in the US. Cards you can reload are more like payroll cards and have totally different BINs and act like debit card because they require SS#.

The gateway won't know the card is prepaid until it is entered. At that point the only way to switch to a monthly price option would be to kick the user back to a page explaining the situation and asking if they still want to proceed at $29.95.

A good idea, worth testing, requires a bunch of coding at the gateway level.

Hopefully some will give it a try..

The problem I have is gateway has 3 options:

1) block prepaid
2) allow prepaid
3) allow prepaid on sales but not memberships

Where is the option to block prepaid on trial and allow on full membership join??

Now I could code something like maxmind to tell me if prepaid or not before getting to gateway and upsell that way. Or I could add bins I know are prepaid to my own negative database before getting to gateway, but it just doesn't seem worth it...

... past year and a half a huge increase in chargebacks on prepaids. So I just block them all together.