Welcome back to Subscriptions Weekly–your one-stop newsletter for industry news! This one is all about the future of payments and how they can become a growth strategy for subscription businesses. We also review Mastercard’s plans to incorporate generative AI, TIME’s removal of its paywall, Finix’s launch as a payment processor, and Twitter’s upcoming revenue stream diversification strategy.

80% of failed subscription payments aren’t the customer’s fault

As subscription businesses navigate customer retention challenges and increase lifetime value (LTV), understanding the root causes of failed payments is essential.

Research by PYMNTS and FlexPay states that four in five failed payments occur due to friction in the process, causing the provider to decline legitimate transactions. Subscription providers that adopted payment recovery efforts recouped an estimated $141 billion in revenue in the last year.

In fact, Recurly’s customers recovered nearly $1 billion in revenue and saw 50% of subscribers’ total customer lifetime happen after a recovery event in 2022. Our State of Subscriptions report includes these and more recurring payment benchmarks, plus actionable insights to help you increase LTV with the right recovery strategy. 

TIME makes content more accessible by removing paywall

On June 1st, TIME will be removing the digital paywall on Time.com to make its content more available to all readers. TIME CEO Jessica Sibley shares, “We fundamentally believe that access to trusted information is a global imperative and should be available to all of humanity.” Learn more on TIME.

Mastercard “cannot afford to ignore” AI

The card network company is considering ways to further incorporate generative artificial intelligence, noting it already does so to create data sets used to compare and find threats in the cybersecurity area. As the technology poses opportunities and risks, Mastercard’s application of AI needs to be done carefully. Read more on Payments Dive.

Finix becomes a payments processor, heating up its competition with Stripe

Finix has slowly been taking swipes at Stripe–first becoming a facilitator and now a processor. The payments infrastructure startup is now directly connected to American Express, Discover, Mastercard, and Visa. Learn more on TechCrunch.

Twitter to take 10% cut on content subscriptions after 12 months

Elon Musk, Twitter Inc CEO, said the social media platform will take a 10% cut on content subscriptions after the first year, as the company looks to monetize content on the website in a bid to diversify its revenue streams. Additionally, he added that the cut taken by iOS and Android platforms on subscriptions will drop to 15% in the second year from 30% in the first. Read more on Reuters. 

MoviePass teams up with Walmart

In hopes to create more visibility and entice new subscribers, MoviePass has partnered with Walmart to advertise online and in-store displays. The major retailer will also be selling MoveiPass subscription cards in its stores. This will be a summer launch, but no official date has been announced yet. Learn more on Business Insider.

Join Recurly at these exciting events

Two-part webinar series: Unify subscriber data across web and app stores. We’re ready to show you how to gain a holistic view of your subscription business and build cross-platform workflow automation through Recurly’s APIs and webhooks. Save your spot!

From the Recurly blog

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