Payment Plans Overview
Clubs have always wanted to offer members the option of paying by instalment - we're all sympathetic to people's different financial situations, so the option of paying something off has always made sense. The administrative overhead to clubs of setting up and then maintaining a Payment Plan has always been far too large, which is why this module is the most heavily-requested system enhancement in our history
Sure, there are a lot of third-party providers out there who do the direct debiting portion for you, but there's still the overhead of setting your members up with that provider, and then manually receipting each deduction that is made and transferred to your club on the member's behalf. It's still pretty painful.
Our solution will save you HEAPS of time and effort. In this article, we'll outline how it works and what it costs.
Costs
We are proud to offer native payment plans as our third payment processing option for clubs (in addition to online credit card and BPay). When we say "native", we mean that the solution is seamlessly integrated into the Majestri financial system, which is something that nobody else could possibly offer.
Payment Plan Pricing
The pricing of our offering is composed of two parts:
- The charge to the club will be 2.9%. This figure matches our other payment processing options, and the money will be disbursed to clubs in an identical manner to other money we collect on your behalf.
- For each direct debit that we perform, your member will be charged 99c (inc. GST). After doing our research, we think this is extremely competitive in the direct debit provider market. To be clear on how this works, we may be debiting a $40 deduction from one of your members as an installment on their plan, but the actual amount we debit will be $40.99, which includes the charge. The amount passed onto the club will be $38.68 (minus the 2.9% charge).
Other things to be mindful of around this pricing is:
- There are no setup costs for either the club or your member. We've found most providers do charge a setup fee, but we don't see a need to. We've invested heavily in the software to try and make this part as smooth as possible.
- An additional charge will apply to members where an attempt to debit their bank account is rejected. We pay a penalty fee to our bank when this occurs, so we will pass this on to the member. The cost to a member of a failed debit is $5.50 (inc. GST), and is added on to the next deduction in the schedule
- An additional charge of $2.75 (inc. GST) will apply to members who cancel a scheduled debit on the day of debit. This charge is something we needed to create to deter members from cancelling a debit when they received a notice (email/SMS) from us that a debit was about to occur. In the days before we introduced this charge, a lot of administrative overhead was created for us and the problem had the potential of really getting out of hand.
Conditions and Limitations
As previously mentioned, there are a quite few other direct debit providers in the marketplace, and it's important to note the differences between what they offer and what we have built.
Bank Accounts Only
We are only offering direct debiting of your member's bank accounts (ie. defined by a BSB and account number). We do not currently store credit card information in the system, and have no plans to start doing so. Accordingly, this rules out the option for a Payment Plan to be initiated that is attached to a member's credit card. Our normal debt chasing functionality should continue to be used for members who want to use their card to make payments to the club.
Tuesdays and Fridays Only
Originally, we only ran debits on a Tuesday as that coincided with our weekly distribution. With a year's experience under the belt, we realised that we needed to introduce a second day of the week as an alternative for members who get paid later in the week.
When your members make an application for a Payment Plan, they can now nominate the best day for money to be debited from their account. It should drastically reduce the number of rejections that occur.
No Debt Recovery Services
Unlike other providers, we do not have the resources to strong-arm your members in the case of failed debits. For each failed debit, we get slugged a rejection charge by our bank, so our rules are going to be:
- 2 consecutive failed debits will result in the "freezing" of the member's active Payment Plan. We will contact you (the club) in an effort to work out the situation. If an agreement cannot be reached between the 3 of us - we need to receive an assurance that no subsequent debits will fail - then we will find that the Payment Plan is not viable for the member. Their Plan will be cancelled, and their previously 'committed' amount will automatically move back onto their outstanding debt with the club.
- A subsequent failed debit after a Payment Plan is "unfrozen" will also result in us automatically cancelling the Payment Plan.
No Automatic Surcharging
In the same manner as our other payment processing options, the system will not create a surcharge for our 2.9% payment processing charge for members who elect to use a Payment Plan to pay off their club debt. The large investment of time and resources to build this module has been directed into the software and a service for clubs to use, not the members directly.
We get asked a lot of questions about our payment processing services, and you can find the most common questions, along with answers, here.
Financial Concepts
The introduction of Payment Plans has resulted in some fundamental changes to Majestri's underlying financial system. For a complete overview of the changes and new concepts, please have a good read of our Payment Plan Financials guide.
Payment Plan Lifecycle
The best way to understand our native Payment Plan solution is to break it down into the three main stages of the lifecycle of a Payment Plan
Configuration
We've done what we can to give clubs maximum control over the terms that members must adhere to when applying for a Payment Plan. For an insight into these measures, refer to our guide on Payment Plan Configuration.
Application & Approval
There are a few ways that a Payment Plan can be created and advanced through to a stage where a member has given their OK for debits to occur from their bank account. It's important to understand all the different statuses and workflows that lead to this point, so check out our guide on Payment Plans through the application and approval stages.
Active
After a member has authorised the debits to commence, there are still a few situations which may arise, and require us and you to work together to smooth out any wrinkles. Our guide on managing Payment Plans once they are active describes the most common situations, and gives advice on how to best handle them.
Questions
If you have more questions about our Payment Plan offering, then please refer to our FAQ on the topic.