Streaming, media, energy… The subscription-based business model is very popular. A recent study conducted by Telecoming counts 50 million active subscriptions in France in 2021, representing a value of 5 billion euros. This model provides users with continuous access and instant availability of a product or service. For merchants, the advantage lies in the recurring flow of payments.
However, the subscription shows limits. It implies that consumers have similar needs and habits. However, they now want a personalized experience, access to products and services repeatedly – without commitment/fixed subscription – and which will satisfy them over time. The subscription must then evolve and companies are forced to review their economic models to offer tailor-made consumption and payment methods. This is where the ambition of SlimPay, the European leader in recurring payments, rests. The company, founded by Jérôme Traisnel, was created in 2009, with the desire ” move towards new responsible consumption models “, like the Repeat Economy, “ where the user prefers the economy of use rather than possession “.
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Facilitate customer acquisition with SlimPay
Two elements are at the origin of the creation of SlimPay. The first is the deregulation of banking services. It has enabled actors not coming from the banking sector to make payments. The second is the transformation of purchasing behavior, with the emergence of consumption by use, which consists of renting products and services rather than buying them. This is notably the model of Uber and Amazon. Thanks to a frictionless payment process, the user does not have to enter their personal or payment information each time. Without a subscription, he can order products or vehicles in a few clicks.
To facilitate these recurring purchases, the customer journey must therefore be multichannel and fluid with a simple payment process. Otherwise, the dropout rate may increase. It is therefore essential for merchants to have a payment platform allowing them to reduce it and improve customer acquisition and loyalty, such as SlimPay. The company offers medium and large companies payment methods that can be combined, such as SEPA direct debits and card payments, in order to adapt to the business model chosen by the customer.
The goal is to offer them a personalized, secure and simplified payment experience. ” Consumers today don’t like to feel committed to a subscription, they want to be free. It will then be much more loyal to the brand. He wants to be able to subscribe and unsubscribe without a commitment period and pay according to his consumption “, explains Jérôme Traisnel. ” Today, the success and the future of e-commerce is to revive the “customer account”, that is to say to pay later for products according to their use. adds the CEO. The SlimPay solution thus allows a consumer to spread out his payments, and a merchant to create customer loyalty.
The Repeat Economy to create long-term value
If recurring payments are not new, the concept of Repeat Economy is recent. It consists of facilitating customer loyalty and creating long-term value without going as far as the notion of subscription. This approach is customer-centric: the consumer uses an offer or a service according to his needs. It is not limited by a complex and limiting subscription. This allows merchants to focus their costs and efforts on the customer experience offered and to begin a loyalty process based on the goodwill of the customer.
” If you have created an account on a VTC platform, or on an e-commerce platform, you are more inclined to return to this platform. There is a benefit for the consumer: the customer journey is much smoother, the purchase is made easier, and there are no longer all these frictions, like taking out your credit card (…). You are directly recognized by the platform », explains Jérôme Traisnel. A relationship of trust is thus born: the merchant relies on the so-called “voluntary” loyalty of his customers by submitting a payment as transparent as the subscription presented.
” This is an opportunity for all players to develop recurring formulas without submitting a subscription and develop the consumer’s ability to create an account. The merchant can offer him a payment service split and diluted over time adds the CEO. SlimPay precisely helps companies throughout this process, right from the checkout, that is to say the moment when the consumer will create his account. ” We will allow merchants to manage these “tokens”, which are cryptographic data that secure payment data, and to use this payment data for purchases that will be made on the platform. », indicates Jérôme Traisnel.
Still with a view to helping companies improve their acquisition rate and make the customer experience more fluid, SlimPay intends to bet on Open Banking. ” From the application you are on, we will be able to automatically wake up the banking application present in your phone, and offer you the subscription formula directly in your banking application. All this is possible thanks to banking APIs », explains the CEO. Always motivated by its primary goal, SlimPay wishes to continue to help companies in their digital transformation and contribute to their development in the Repeat Economy.