Category: Industry Insights

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Industry Insights

Recurring Payments Gone Wrong

A customer’s right to terminate their mandate is a key component of the recurring Direct Debit payment mechanism. Not only does this empower customers, but it also gives them the confidence that any unwanted payments will not happen. There are situations though where customers will be bound by other agreements with a business. For example, a gym may have a policy that members can’t cancel in the first six months of their contract.

Here at Curlec, we have put these principles at the forefront of our thinking and have built a recurring payment solution that benefits both businesses and their customers alike.

We regularly hear the problems that customers face when using other recurring payment methods. Upon scrolling through LinkedIn this week, one of our founders came across a post that perfectly sums up when recurring payments go wrong.

“OMG! Bad Company Subscriptions… harder to get rid of than the Reader’s Digest!

They rolled over my subscription without notification or permission and then gave me no way to cancel online. My online support case never answered and after several attempts to call them, I was routed back to their office in the US. The support agent couldn’t spell my name to find my account so he then insisted on connecting to my computer which I politely refused.

After several failed attempts to spell my name, my account was finally identified. This was then followed by a debate about whether my account was still under an annual contract… which I never agreed to! I was then sent an email asking me to confirm that I wanted to cancel my subscription with the promise of a confirmation email that still hasn’t arrived. It might have been easier for me to cancel my credit card 🙁

Moral of the story – avoid Bad Company at all cost!” -a frustrated customer

Cancelling your subscription payments shouldn’t be this difficult. And with Curlec, it’s not.

How Curlec Can Help Your Business

Curlec allows customers to set up a Direct Debit using a Current, Savings or Credit Card account, whilst also enabling a maximum amount to be set for each transaction. Customers are in complete control of when to amend or cancel their Direct Debit payments, providing that this does not breach any other contractual terms that they have with a business. We at Curlec believe that this is the fairest way to do business for both buyers and sellers.

If you would like to find out more, or have had any “Bad Company” experiences, feel free to contact us here by leaving your details in the form below.

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Case Studies Industry Insights

Making Payments Easy For The Union

“Curlec has enabled us to reduce our cash flow risks and taken away the administration associated with payment collection” – Carlos Villa, Founder of Union Strength

Union Strength was founded by Carlos Villa in 2017, and it was born out of a mission to provide a community of like-minded gym goers a space where they could truly focus on strength and conditioning.

Prioritising Cash Flow

Malaysia has seen a recent boom in the fitness industry with the number of gyms rising dramatically over the past decade. However, many of these gyms have been unable to sustain themselves and in some cases, closed within a year of opening. This epidemic has not been exclusive to boutique gyms, with international fitness chains falling foul as well.

With this in mind, Carlos was keen from the outset to ensure that he had all the infrastructure in place to ensure that managing cash flow would not be an issue. This involved finding a solution that would be easy for customers to sign up to whilst also simple for the Union Strength team to use when collecting membership fees.

“When I was working on my business plan it became clear that managing cash flow was paramount to success. We’ve made a large investment in equipment and needed to ensure that members have an easy and simple way to pay their monthly fees,” explained Carlos.

“We also needed a system that didn’t solely rely on credit cards as this would not account for our entire member demographic.”

Partnering with Curlec

Union Strength opened its doors in December 2017 and has been taking full advantage of Curlec. As a start-up company, Carlos has been keen to ensure that as many of his processes are digital and automated.

“We used Curlec’s Instant Pay feature to collect our one-off introductory offer. Following this, we have been signing up clients online using Direct Debit,” said Carlos. “The different payment options and the fact that we know our monthly fees will be collected on time is a huge benefit for us.”

If you would like to know how Curlec can help your business stay in control of cash flow, like Union Strength, please contact us here today by filling in the form beneath this page.

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Guides Industry Insights

Introducing Curlec

The Recurring Payment Solution for Malaysian Businesses.

We are proud to launch our new brand, Curlec. As some of our clients and partners will notice, this is a rebrand of our previous identity, MyDirectDebit. We have chosen to do this to inject fresh energy into our new product offering and company. We are a young, vibrant FinTech organisation that is ready and able to disrupt the status quo, and we wanted a brand to reflect this. We believe that Curlec does the job.

Our business is centered around Recurring Collections, and this is how the Curlec name was born.

We want Curlec to be used as a verb in a similar way to how words such as ‘Google’ or ‘Uber’ are used. Expect to hear a lot of ‘Curlec’ in 2018.

From a product development perspective, we are way ahead of our original plan. Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you would like to learn more. We have a significant growth strategy for the next few years for this extremely underserved payment mechanism in Malaysia, and as with all great software companies, we take the view that our job is never complete. Join us as we continuously improve and evolve our offering that will make the lives of businesses around Malaysia significantly easier.

We will be going through an Equity Crowdfunding exercise with PitchIn in the coming months so keep an eye out for this. We will make sure to keep you all updated.

So welcome to our journey to revolutionise Direct Debit in Malaysia and beyond.

Happy 2018 everyone – have a great year ahead.