Offering payment plans makes it easier for your customers to afford your products by letting them pay smaller installments over time, rather than in one lump sum.
Introduction
Offering payment plans lets you divide the cost of your products into automatic monthly payments.
For instance, instead of charging $600 in one lump sum payment, you can create a payment plan that allows customers to pay $200 per month over three months.
This option lowers the initial payment and provides a more convenient way for customers to manage a larger purchase over time.
Here are some some things to keep in mind before setting up payment plans:
Payment plans are charged to the customer’s credit card each month based on their billing date. This billing date is set by the day they originally signed up for your product.
Billing will stop once the total number of installments you selected for the payment plan has been completed
There are risks involved with setting up a payment plan (one-time credit cards, insufficient funds, customers not paying etc).
You can learn more about how to manage and retry failed payment plans in this article
Setting up payment plans
Here's how to set up payment plans for your product:
From your Podia dashboard, click on Products in the sidebar menu.
Click on Edit next to the product you want to set up a payment plan for.
Once inside the product, navigate to the Pricing tab.
Click on Edit to edit the offer of your product.
Click on the Payment plan option to enable it for your product.
Set the installment amount and the number of months you’d like the payment plan to run.
On the right, you’ll see the total price you’ve set for your product. It doesn’t need to match the single payment price.
You can choose to offer just a payment plan, or provide both options, allowing customers to pay in full or through installments.
Click Save to save your pricing changes.
What happens when a payment plan is created?
You can view and manage all customer payment plans from the Payment Plans page in your dashboard.
Once a customer signups up for a payment plan, a subscription for their payment plan will be created on their Stripe profile.
The payment plan will be created as a subscription and you can see:
A charge made for the first installment of the payment plan
A 30-day trial added to the subscription
A subscription with the duration of the remaining installments
It is imperative that you do NOT modify this subscription created by Podia in Stripe. Any changes made to this Stripe subscription - such as canceling it - cannot be reversed.
You should manage your payment plans directly from Podia by following these steps.
FAQs
What will customers see when they select the payment plan option?
What will customers see when they select the payment plan option?
Customers will see an indication that there is a payment plan option across your site, for example, on your sales page:
If you’ve set up multiple payment options, they’ll be able to choose their preferred option during checkout.
Here's what it looks like for your customers during checkout:
If I change the price of an payment plan, will that impact existing customers?
If I change the price of an payment plan, will that impact existing customers?
No. Changing the price of a product will only impact new customers.
Current customers - including the ones with an active payment plan - won't be affected.
How do coupons work with payment plans?
How do coupons work with payment plans?
The discount will be spread out over each number of months. To illustrate:
Total price before coupon: $200
The payment plan without the coupon for 4 payments: $50 each month
The total price of the product with coupon: $100
The payment plan with the coupon for 4 payments: $25 each month
How do failed installments get retried?
How do failed installments get retried?
Podia uses your Stripe's account Smart retries settings to attempt new retries for failed installment charges.
By default, smart retries are set to "Retry up to 8 times in 2 weeks", but you can change these values at anytime on your Stripe Revenue Recovery settings.
If all attempts fail, their payment plan will be canceled.
Is PayPal supported for payment plans?
Is PayPal supported for payment plans?
No. PayPal isn't supported on payment plans; more details can be found here.
Make sure you have connected your Stripe account, to be able to offer payment plans for your products.
Still need help?
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