Here are some interesting questions about billing....
 

When people join with credit cards...What percentage actually use a credit card vs. a debit card?

Along with that......Which type of customer rebills at a higher percentage?

Which is more likely to notice the charge and cancel? The guy watching his checking account or the one paying his monthly Visa bill?

Your thoughts?

I think most debit cards are also visa cards these days...but good topic...i would say people watch their bank check accounts more closely than credit card statements..

Well, i've found that most people under the age of 25 cancel very quickly and use the service as much as possible in the space of time they have, while older people tend to rebill without warrying, and at the same time log into the members area on more regular basis, eg: 2 to 3 times/week and they also download smaller amounts at a time... Just a trend I noticed :)
Also, most checking account payments cancel their rebills after the first charge, and the ones who dont usually have their check bounce :(

As for the credit/debit, I don't really have a way of checking it with my payment processor so can't help you there mate.

US debit cards are processed through Visa or MC.......But coming from a banking background, I know that there are ways to tell which is which based on the first 4 numbers. You can also use those numbers to determine what bank issued the card and what type of account it is issued on.

Example: 4635 are the first 4 numbers of many BofA business Check Cards.

All MasterCard's start with a 5 and all Visa's start with a 4. Discover starts with an 8 if I recall correctly......

There is a shitload of info that can be gathered from the first few numbers....

Agreed, my guess is people who are tight on money and therefore need to watch accounts are going to be more concerned with actual funds in a bank versus credit.

How is it that you are able to attain the ages of your members and compare those with their patterns?

Assuming you could get this information, what would you do with it?

I ran a survey in the members area and credited everyone who provided their details with a free month of access :upsidedow

Great idea. Thanks for sharing that. :thumbsup

Analyze it and find a way to profit better.

According to Visa 39% of all their cards used are Visa debit cards !

A Visa debit card is directly linked to your bank accounts right? In canada they're seperate so I'm not quite sure how it works in the states.

WG

A couple things... Granted my experience in this area is a tad outdated. What I saw back in the hey days was much different from what I saw 3-4 years later which is what I am posting my knowledge about here. So things could be much different now than they were 3-5 years ago.

#1) Checks bounced at a high rate, but once you had them they seemed to go through for longer periods of time .... The checks that 'bounced' were mostly actually fake checking accounts not bounces.

#2) The older the member the better chance of retaining them. I think this is due to the men having multiple credit card accounts and being smart enough to hide at least one from the woman. I know I do at the age of 26 (27 soon).

And there are other ways to attain this data... besides offering a free month, which I don't see how you did without costing all of your rebills as the customer will say "O.K. I want my free month cancel me now and I'll take it next month" - Seriously this has to be a joke... lol

The most common answer and to tell you the truth the best way to keep recurrings higher along with initial conversions is asking for more information on the join page. Does it kill some impulse buys? Yeah the guys who are trying to type one handed get turned away .... But you also just killed a $1.95 - $4.95 join that would of cost you $30 + through your affiliate program and cancelled within hours (most likely after they washed up lol).

Statistical analysis, a program that integrates with the billing system providing sound data based on the first X digits of the number is the next Geo-Tracking type of solution. And the person who comes up with the programming required to offer this to webmasters will make some money.