Two companies sell the same subscription for the same price. One charges a card automatically on the first of the month. The other sends an invoice and waits for a transfer. The first gets paid on time and loses customers whose cards fail. The second gets paid late, yet keeps customers whose finance department forbids stored cards.
Choosing between them is not a preference. It follows from who your customers are. Getting it wrong shows up as high involuntary churn or as a receivables problem nobody on the product team sees.
When an invoice beats a card
Business customers above a certain size often cannot pay by card at all. Procurement requires a document before money moves. Besides, the card belongs to one person who may leave, and accounting wants a reference number. For those customers an invoice is not a worse payment method; it is the only one that works.
The threshold is usually the annual value rather than company size. Below a few hundred euros a year, a card is simpler for everyone. Above a few thousand, expect to be asked for an invoice regardless of what your signup page offers.
Many businesses end up running both: cards for self-serve plans, invoices for anything negotiated. That is more work than one method, yet less work than losing the half of the market you cannot serve.
What has to be on the document
An invoice that the customer’s accountant rejects is the same as no invoice, because payment waits for the corrected version. The mandatory content depends on jurisdiction, but the parts people get wrong are predictable.
Sequential numbering without gaps. Your full legal entity details, not a brand name. The customer’s legal entity and tax number where applicable. The period the charge covers, stated explicitly — «subscription» without dates causes more queries than any other line. The tax treatment, including the reason when tax is not charged. And payment details that match the account the money actually lands in.
That last point sounds trivial and is a common source of delay. The invoice may show one account while your business IBAN is another. Then somebody’s payment sits unmatched for a week.
Getting paid without chasing
The gap between sending an invoice and receiving money is where the method loses. Three things close it.
Send early rather than on the due date. Approval inside a company takes days that have nothing to do with willingness to pay. Put a payment link on the document so the person reading it can pay immediately rather than forwarding it onward. And reconcile automatically by reference, because manual matching is what makes finance teams dread this model.
If you also accept cards for other customers, make sure both flows land somewhere you can see together. Reports that split by method and show what is outstanding come with our merchant account setup. They are not a separate product.
The hybrid that works
One pattern is worth copying. Issue the invoice, then let the customer pay by transfer or by card through a link on the document. Larger clients use the transfer, smaller ones click the link, and you stop maintaining two separate billing processes.
It also solves the renewal problem. An annual invoice with a card link converts far better than an annual invoice alone. Somebody can settle it in thirty seconds instead of adding it to a payment run. Which payment methods appear on that link is worth deciding deliberately.
Currency and tax on the document
Cross-border invoicing adds two columns that cause more disputes than the amount itself.
Currency has to be stated explicitly and has to match what the customer will actually transfer. If you invoice in euros and the client pays from a dollar account, the amount arriving differs from the amount owed. Somebody has to decide in advance who absorbs the difference. Writing that rule into the terms once saves an argument per invoice.
Tax treatment needs a reason, not only a number. For business customers in other countries the usual case is that no tax is charged. However, the document has to say why and carry the customer’s tax number. An invoice without that line comes back.
Both are easier when collection sits in one place rather than several. That is what processing and a single settlement account are for.
Recurring questions are answered in our FAQ.
What to settle before you start
Decide who issues invoices: the billing system or your accounting software. Never both, because duplicate numbering is painful to unwind. Decide the payment term and apply it consistently. Decide what happens when an invoice goes unpaid: at what point service pauses, and who makes that call.
Then write it down. Invoicing rules live in someone’s head in most companies. Eventually that person goes on holiday during the quarter-end run.
The setup on our side takes from 5 days, with steps on how it works.
Rates for middle-risk models start from 1.8% on the pricing page.
One more thing worth deciding early: who follows up when an invoice is late. If nobody owns it, the follow-up happens when someone notices, which is usually a month after it mattered.
Connection from 5 days. Fees from 1.8% — transparent terms, no hidden charges. Leave a request or book a consultation and we will put together the right setup for your niche and risk profile.
Read next
- Recurring Billing for Business: Setup, Costs and What Breaks
- Payment Retry Logic: When to Try Again and When to Stop
- Card Not Present Fraud: What It Costs You and What Actually Reduces It
- Dunning Management: Recovering Payments Without Annoying Customers
- Involuntary Churn: The Subscribers You Lose Without Them Deciding To Leave