Deferred payments and installments

Installments and deferred payments are available through:

• Subscription-based installments
• External providers, like PayPo

Subscription-based installments

This is a clever, simple method that allows collecting payments in several tranches based on a subscription. We've added a special option that automatically cancels the subscription after a specific number of cycles. For example, if your product costs 1200 and you want to split it into 3 monthly installments, you can use the following price settings:

All these settings are important because this way:

• The first installment will be collected immediately upon payment
• Subsequent ones are collected according to the subscription renewal (here every 1 month)
• The subscription will be automatically cancelled after 3 cycles (1 payment immediately and 2 additional after subsequent months)
• Access to the product will be maintained after the subscription expires
• It's not possible to cancel the subscription early

Remember that the number of cycles to cancel that you enter is the total number of installments for this specific amount, including the first payment. So if you want to collect 10,000 in 10 installments of 1000 each, enter 10 here.

How is this different from installments offered by providers like Klarna or PayPo?

Primarily, you don't receive the full amount upfront, and you have to monitor whether the installments are being paid. The option that prevents subscription cancellation helps with this, but in practice, you can't rule out the possibility that someone might use a one-time card, and subsequent payments can't be collected.

On the other hand, there are also many benefits - such installments are much cheaper and don't require customers to go through a KYC process, which involves taking out a loan and often requires, for example, uploading a photo of a document. There are also situations where customers receive a negative decision on granting installments.

How to simulate deferred payment in a similar way?

You can do this by starting a trial period, for example for 30 days, on such a subscription. Then, set automatic cancellation of the subscription after one cycle. This way, the customer pays nothing upfront, and after 30 days the full amount is collected, and the subscription automatically cancels, so no further amounts will be collected. The inability to cancel early and maintaining access after subscription expiration should be enabled.