In today’s business environment, the recharge function has become a common means for many platforms and merchants to attract users and improve transaction efficiency. However, the hidden routines and risks behind recharges cannot be ignored. This article delves into the design logic of the recharge function, potential issues, and the importance of compliant operations.
Recharge is a user payment function provided by many platforms when acquiring customers or transactions, such as Lala, Debon, HUAWEI CLOUD and Alibaba Cloud and other platforms provide credit cards to recharge accounts. In life, we often see publicity such as “recharge and get 100 back 50”, “recharge more and get more free”, “apply for a card to enjoy discounts”, and even create a sense of dignity through VIP, SVIP and other membership levels, so that users feel specially treated. However, behind these seemingly pet fans, there are often hidden secrets, as the saying goes, greedy for small bargains and big losses, easy recharge can easily fall into the trap designed by merchants or platforms. There are not many routines and tricks here for recharge, and under normal circumstances, there must be withdrawals when there is a recharge, otherwise it is incomplete from a design point of view, and a closed loop is not formed. The following author will dismantle the routine here, look at the essence through the phenomenon, and share how to design recharge to improve user experience, avoid risks and comply with operations.
1. How dare you recharge your credit card?
Many platforms/merchants support credit card recharge, such as: HUAWEI CLOUD, Alibaba Cloud, Lala account credit card recharge, Debon prepaid card credit card recharge. Alipay, WeChat, UnionPay and other accounts do not support credit card recharge. So whether credit card recharge is reasonable, legal and compliant depends on the specific scenario and transaction substance.
2. Recharge is very tasteless
For users (consumers), recharge is not a necessary option. In low-frequency transactions or service easy to measure and bill scenarios, it is slightly tasteless, and direct payment is the best, and when there is no discount, users basically will not recharge first and then consume.
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However, the phenomenon of recharging is common in reality and is reasonable in some scenarios. For example, in high-frequency transactions and difficult to measure and bill scenarios, automatic account balance deduction can significantly improve efficiency. Users do not need to pay for every transaction, and the operation experience is smoother and more convenient. This design not only optimizes the user experience, but also improves transaction efficiency, which is a reasonable application scenario for the recharge function.
3. There are many recharge routines
A routine that is often played on the recharge platform
Charged
In the online eye-catching discounts of platforms and merchant applications or the sweet smile of the offline lady, under a meal of touting and various temptations, few users will withstand the temptation not to recharge, and you will be converted by the platform operation and successfully boarded the pirate ship, and it will be difficult to think about it later.
Discounts on card applications
After applying for the card, you are a VIP and SVIP member, with privileges to enjoy X discounts and ABCD benefits. Isn’t this kind of propaganda familiar? In the fitness and swimming industry, the beauty and hairdressing industry, this marketing method has almost become the standard for publicity, almost the “hardest hit area”. By creating a membership hierarchy system, merchants use discounts and benefits as bait to attract consumers to continue to recharge and apply for cards.
The platform has a soft spot for users to recharge and is very obsessed
It is mainly based on four considerations:
Improve user experience
For enterprise users, due to the large transaction volume and complex corporate payment process (involving multi-level approval, offline payment, etc.), the use of the pre-recharge model can significantly improve the payment efficiency and complete a large recharge at one time, which can meet the needs of multiple payments within a period of time, which not only simplifies the financial process, but also avoids the cumbersome payment one by one.
For high-frequency users or enterprise users, the payment experience is not good for batch orders or multiple orders at the same time, and the automatic deduction of the account balance can not only achieve “second-level” payment, but also avoid repeated verification, greatly improving the smoothness of transactions.
Lock in funds in advance
The user recharge platform or merchant locks this fund in advance, which is conducive to supplementing the capital flow of the platform or merchant, and at the same time can precipitate funds to enjoy the benefits of precipitated funds.
Self-interest to prevent capital losses
Generally, platforms or merchants in a strong position in the transaction process will require users to recharge first, and if the balance is less than a certain amount, they will remind users that they need to replenish funds, and when the amount is insufficient, they will restrict transactions or stop providing services, and there is no risk of not being able to get back the postpaid funds (there is no trouble of collecting accounts receivable, and the risk of bad debts caused by accounts receivable not being able to be collected).
Bad intentions, running away with money
Many platforms or merchants have bad intentions from the beginning of their establishment, inducing users to recharge through well-designed marketing rhetoric and false promises, and then running away with money after the funds accumulate to a certain scale. This chaos of “recharge fraud” is particularly rampant in prepaid industries such as beauty salons, education and training, fitness and swimming, and has become the hardest hit area for damage to consumer rights and interests.
Fourth, in-depth ideas for recharge design
1. Insight into the payment characteristics of the industry
In the supply chain industry, the payment system design of leading enterprises is based on comprehensive considerations of industry characteristics, user habits and the strength of the enterprise itself. Typical cases include JD Logistics and Cainiao Network using the pre-recharge transaction deduction model, while SF Express opens the monthly settlement period to large customers. When your platform or merchant does not have the right to speak on the head platform, the feasibility of pre-recharge is not strong, and most of the large customers are postpaid monthly settlement or longer settlement periods, and pay first and pay later.
2. Clarify the purpose of recharge design
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I am willing to help platforms or merchants achieve their dreams and realize them if they are designed for the following purposes
Improve user experience
Lock in funds in advance
Self-interest to prevent capital losses
Shameless
Bad intentions, running away with money
If it is for such a bad purpose, then this job cannot be taken at all – no matter how much money is given. We have a bottom line, and there is no need to have the heart of a cabbage seller selling white powder. Basic professional ethics must be adhered to, and immoral things without conscience must not be done!
3. Digital product solutions
To achieve recharge, you need to open an account or apply for a card before you can recharge.
3.1 Account opening
Enterprise users and individual users generally need real-name authentication to open a payment account, enterprises need to authenticate the information of enterprises and legal persons or authorize legal persons to do agency authentication, and open accounts for users on the platform side or channel side after passing the authentication.
3.2 Binding card recharge
After the account is successfully opened, you can recharge, the recharge page will involve the following preferential information (recharge), etc., and the payment methods that can be recharged include card binding recharge, offline recharge, Alipay WeChat UnionPay and other third-party payment recharge. There are a few points to note here, the user’s operating terminal, the recharge amount, whether it has the same name, whether credit cards are allowed, whether it is public or private, which will affect the design logic. After choosing the method, users will basically go through this process, and they can refer to Alipay’s payment design.
3.3 Transaction processing
Normal
If the user successfully recharges, the platform or merchant account will increase the transaction amount based on the existing balance.
Abnormal situation
a. Callback is the main and query is supplementary
During the payment process, if the user does not complete the payment in time or does not receive the callback notification of the access payment channel due to network reasons, it is necessary to check the payment result at certain intervals to confirm whether the payment is successful.
b. Do a good job of power and do not deduct money repeatedly
In the recharge scenario, although there is no loss of funds, it will affect the user experience and doubts about the professionalism of the platform, and the solution is to refund in time or withdraw by the user.
c. The transaction is successful, the deposit fails
If the transaction control is not done well during the design, the payment transaction is successful, the accounting fails, the money is successfully deducted, and the account is not registered in time, it needs to be compensated or adjusted synchronously.
3.4 Payment reconciliation
The platform or merchant should reconcile the payment channel every day to ensure that the accounts are consistent and the accounts are consistent. Download the channel transaction file and fund file, analyze the data, the platform or merchant side file needs to match the transaction details and the total amount and details of the fund entry turnover, the amount and status should be consistent, you (payment channel) have me (platform/merchant) have, the amount is the same, you have me or not, the channel shall prevail, I have you and you do not, the channel is the mainstay, the amount is inconsistent and needs to be checked for design problems, and the abnormality needs to be manually checked and processed.
3.5 Achieve effect evaluation
Through data embedding (page embedding, page embedding data collected during the transaction process to understand user usage habits, operation duration, analysis churn rate), transaction data analysis (can analyze recharge transactions, payment conversion rate, payment success rate according to transaction volume, transaction amount, transaction bank, transaction region, terminal, frequency)
epilogue
As a user, you should treat various payment recharges rationally, and don’t be hot-headed and deceived by unscrupulous merchants or platforms. Read carefully, sign the agreement carefully, check how to handle the balance of withdrawal, and read the terms such as balance withdrawal or refund carefully. It is easy to get on the pirate ship and difficult to get off the pirate ship, it is not easy for everyone to make money, and no one’s money is blown by the wind.
It is very important for platforms or merchants to do payment compliance, business development is heavier, compliance is worthless if business development is not developed, and flawed design is reasonable at a certain stage. For example: back then, the credit card returned the white strip, quickly occupying the user’s mind, the white strip is really fragrant, as long as it does not violate basic business ethics, there is no problem in marketing customer acquisition, do not falsely promote routine users. Integrity is the foundation of business, do not help abuse when doing product design, do not do things that violate professional ethics. Payment product design experience, compliance, and risk control are all indispensable.
