Variable monthly recurring payments in UK

Question

I'm trying to find a payment provider that allows me to process variable subscription payments - I have an SaaS offering which is to be charged for on the usage of it, so the monthly costs will be variable.

E.g I could have to bill:

         Jan    Fab

User 1   £10    £15
User 2   £25    £20  

Initially I thought that paypal would be ok with their automatic payments, but it does not appear you can update the billing amounts via the API - something that is fairly key.

It seems that Authorize.Net would do the trick, or any other processor, but the catch is I dont have an internet merchant account at the minute - and don't really want to have to sort on until things are off the ground.

I have also had a look at Sassy, http://saasy.com/, but this doesn't allow variable monthly billing - only ondemand "top ups".

Any suggestions on providers, or should I look to switch to a "credit" / "topup" model?

Answer 1

I see 2 options:

1. Use PayPal Recurring Billing and just alter the recurring billing profile before it charges each month. Sort of a pain and there is definitely room for error here. Not the best option IMO.

2. Use Reference Transactions with PayPal. You would build your own recurring billing logic and essentially just charge the customer what you need to each billing period.

Answer 2

Since you are in UK, you could use PayPal Payments Pro, BraintreePayments or Stripe (in beta) & build your own recurring billing logic on top. Or you could get one of these gateways & use it in a plug-&-play ready recurring solution.

Recurly ChargeBee Chargify

Disclosure: I am a Co-founder of ChargeBee.