February 18, 2022

As we discussed in a previous blog post, churn can undermine your efforts to build a strong unlimited wash plan. One cause of churn is expired and declined credit cards. Without putting safeguards and processes in place, you can lose members simply because your point-of-sale (POS) system is unable to charge their cards. This is becoming more prevalent with the rise of breaches that require card reissues.

A good POS system should provide an option to automatically retry members’ credit cards for a period of time after they have been declined. This has helped car wash operators significantly reduce churn.

Operators now have another tool in their arsenal: The automatic credit card account updater. Provided by some credit processors, this service automatically checks for and applies credit card changes within the POS, potentially reducing your overall credit card declines by 20%.

How it Works

If you wanted to get ahead of declines in the past, you had to proactively contact members whose cards were about to expire and ask them to update the information. Some POS systems might help you automate this process, but you were still depending on your customer to update their information or risk losing them as a member.

A credit card account updater removes that obstacle. Prior to your recharge date each month, the processor checks with the card issuers each month to see if any customers’ credit cards have changed. The processor then generates a new token to replace the existing one and updates the information in the stored profile.

Benefits of the Automatic Credit Card Updater

The biggest benefit of an automatic credit card updater, of course, is retaining unlimited plan members. Once they fall off your plan, there’s no guarantee they will rejoin, and if they do, there will likely be a gap between when they fall off and when they sign back up, resulting in lost revenue.

This service can also result in improved customer service and increased customer loyalty.

“Furthermore, in the age of convenience, the amount of time it takes to dig in a wallet and enter a new card number can be the difference between you keeping and losing a customer. Expired payment info can serve as an easy excuse to not renew non-essential subscriptions, even if they were happy with the service,” according to a Fiserv (formerly CardConnect) article.

Finally, by utilizing an automatic credit card updater, you reduce the effort and cost you may be expending to manually keep member account information up-to-date.

Get Started

If you’re ready to reduce unlimited wash plan membership churn caused by credit card declines, ask your POS provider about this service.

DRB^® customers can get this service by using Fiserv and enabling the optional Card Account Updater feature. For more information, contact CCardSupport@DRB.com.