Visa "Free Trial" Changes - Is This the End of CC-Backed Free Trials?
"Visa is changing their rules governing free-trial and promotion-driven subscriptions on April 18, 2020."
I couldn't find any discussion about this topic on HN (maybe my search terms sucked) but in any case, I thought I'd see if anyone here has looked at what this April 2020 rule change means for credit-card backed free trials.
Obviously, free trials (that require CC's) are a way to get customers to try your product with little to no risk for the customer, but also with some level of commitment for the business owner too.
A popular recent study (was it by Microconf, maybe? I can't remember...) showed literally no difference in on-boarding with CC-backed free trials vs. no credit card trials.
However, that does not include the high degree of hassle that I have experienced offering "no credit card needed" trials where customers want to keep using your product, but just can't seem to ever quite figure out how to add a credit card to your site (while they keep using the service). Every minute you're wasting emailing back and forth on that problem, instead of building and growing your business, is self induced because you didn't require CC's at sign up.
Therefore, I currently offer free trials, where we collect the credit card information, for 3, 7, and 30 day trials for different products. Like most good businesses, even after a free trial expires, if a customer asks for a refund, I process it no questions asked and hope they come back in the future.
However, reading these new Visa requirements, I'm wondering if I need to lean towards no free trials, and instead offering a 3, 7, or 30 day money back guarantee.
Among the variety of changes, some make it more of a problem to properly run a free trial than just stopping free trials and switching to 100% money back guarantees for new customers.
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This descriptor (for example, “trial,” “trial period,” “free trial”) must appear on the statement.
Descriptors are 22 letters long, max. "Free Trial" uses up 10 of them. -
7 day notice before the end of the free trial.
I guess that means no free trials less than 8 days. That's two of mine already not allowed. -
Lots of "requirements" around notifications, receipts, terms, etc. that likely will result in more disputes for us, no matter how well we document the sign up process. For any business that gets a lot of disputes, how many more do you really want?
So I'm a bit up in the air on what to do about this. Am I over-complicating the changes? Or does it make money-back guarantees just a bit easier to work into our business process flow?
I'd love to hear anyone else's thoughts on this change and thoughts going forward with CC-required free trials.
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TBH, this sounds more like a good move in reaction to the numerous complaints towards cable TV service providers in the US.
I agree, I have no problem with the concept, I think it's a huge help!
I was just trying to think of it from a business owner perspective, does it make CC trials more of a problem and maybe make us lean towards other ways to get people to try our products.