The payment management service company Chargify has launched a new tool for billing management. Called WhoPays, Chargify developed this to address a common pain point for subscription-based businesses looking to manage subscriber payments on an enterprise level.
“Chargify was born to solve our own pains and the market’s pains,” Chargify CEO Tom Rotem wrote in his company blog post. “Almost a decade later, we have helped thousands of businesses manage over 20 million subscriptions and collect over $3 billion in recurring revenue.”
The San Antonio-based Scaleworks portfolio company specializes in selling its online billing software. Tom Rotem joined the startup as CEO in September and has been busy implementing this new service to address the shift in how customers pay for subscription services.
“The customer receiving the subscription may not be paying for it, and the customer paying may be responsible for many subscriptions,” Rotten wrote. “We realized there were no elegant “out-of-the-box” solutions that put businesses in full control of deciding who pays for what subscriptions.”
The typical pattern in signing up for and paying for subscription services is for the buyer to receive the purchased service. WhoPays enables an account manager to assign or reassign payment responsibility for any subscription or group of subscriptions easily. The new service operates on the network of employees who are authorized in making purchasing decisions for subscription services. Chargify re-engineered their underlying invoice architecture to focus on customer relationships so businesses could better control payment responsibilities.
“Billing models are evolving faster than businesses can keep pace,” Rotem told Startups San Antonio. “Businesses come to us because their current infrastructure got in the way of their customer-centric approach. Our recent innovations in our platform, specifically WhoPays and Customer Hierarchies, are important added capabilities. “
Billing, especially for subscriber services, is becoming more complex, according to the latest billing industry trend report. Consumers demand simple, easy billing while businesses need flexibility in varied payment models and plans. Billing models like Chargify are responding to the need to satisfy both business-to-customer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) expectations.
With more businesses selling to multiple business units, regional offices, or multinational locations within an organization, Chargify recognized the need to create a hierarchy-based billing and payment tool. WhoPays allows companies to bill their customers according to customized decision-making groups so the responsible person paying the service for a group of employees can make one payment on a single consolidated invoice.
“WhoPays is the capstone feature on the new invoice-first architecture we’ve been building to make subscriptions more relational,” stated chief technology officer and co-founder Michael Klett.
Since its launch in 2009, Chargify has acquired over 23 global million subscribers for its billing services. The company has about 65 employees and is looking to hire more as it continues its growth.
“This release is part of our broader commitment to serving more complex businesses, ones that require maximum flexibility at scale,” Rotten wrote. “Our goal is to allow our customers to operate more creatively, without limitations, and have a billing infrastructure that supports their current and future needs.”
