Growing a subscription business is no easy feat. In the early stages, most subscription companies focus on building a great product, while payments are often managed by simply plugging in a provider like Airwallex or Stripe. These platforms excel at accepting payments from customers around the world, but as your business grows, it quickly becomes clear that a payments provider alone isn’t enough to support ongoing subscription growth.

To truly scale, subscription businesses need a billing system that can manage the entire subscriber experience - offering flexible pricing plans (monthly or annual), free trials and discounts, seamless upgrades and downgrades, effective customer retention strategies, and robust tools for tracking and reducing churn.

This is where a billing solution like OpenPay comes in. OpenPay sits on top of whichever payment provider you use and adds all of these essential subscription features. For example, OpenPay integrates with Airwallex – a global payments platform that processes over $150 billion in transactions annually. By using Airwallex, subscription businesses gain a strong foundation for accepting payments worldwide. Adding OpenPay on top unlocks advanced billing and subscription capabilities needed to scale effectively.

This blog explores the billing features companies gain when they use Airwallex as their payments provider and add OpenPay on top. While many of these benefits also apply to other payment processors like Stripe, the focus here is specifically on Airwallex.

1. Flexible Pricing

For subscription companies, offering flexible pricing across different billing periods is essential to meet the diverse needs of customers. Most businesses provide a mix of options, such as:

  • Monthly and annual plans: For example, offering a subscription at $50 per month or $500 per year, often with a discount for annual billing.
  • Free trials and promotional discounts: Options like a 14-day free trial to drive sign-ups or a limited-time 20% discount for the first three months.
  • Usage-based pricing and volume tiers: Charging $0.10 per API call up to 10,000 calls and $0.05 thereafter, or providing different tiers such as Basic and Pro.
  • Custom enterprise pricing: Negotiated pricing and payment terms tailored to large clients.
  • Regional pricing: Adjusting fees for different markets and currencies to match local purchasing power. 

OpenPay supports all these pricing models and, importantly, makes it easy for companies to experiment with different prices and adjust trial periods to optimize results. Pricing changes can be managed through a no-code dashboard for product teams or via APIs for developers who want to automate workflows. Here’s a demo that shows all the pricing features OpenPay offers.

‍

2. Real-Time Insights into Subscription Metrics

When merchants add OpenPay on top of Airwallex, they gain access to a live dashboard of SaaS metrics without needing extra spreadsheets or third-party analytics tools. This is a huge plus. One Airwallex merchant shared that after adopting OpenPay, they simply exported cohort retention reports each month to share with VCs. It saves time and puts all the metrics they need at their fingertips to figure out how to grow their company.

Examples of metrics in the dashboard are:

  • Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR): to track how recurring revenue grows or declines month over month.
  • Churn Rate: to monitor the percentage of subscribers canceling and identify retention issues early.
  • New Customer Acquisition: to see how new sign-ups and marketing campaigns contribute to revenue growth.
  • Cohort Analysis: to assess how different customer groups that joined at different times behave over time and measure engagement and retention by signup date. Sometimes, this reveals patterns—for example, a specific marketing campaign might bring in longer-lasting customers compared to others.

And here’s a demo of the metrics OpenPay offers and how to navigate them: ‍

3. Using AI to Reduce Churn and Keep Subscribers Engaged 

Even the best products face some level of churn. Surprisingly, a significant share of churn is involuntary, meaning these customers did not intend to stop using the service but did so because a payment failed due to an expired credit card, a reached limit, or outdated billing information. Studies show that failed payments account for up to 40% of subscription churn. For subscription businesses, this represents a major concern and an area of improvement they can’t afford to ignore if they want to drive revenue growth. A billing system that helps prevent these unnecessary losses can have a substantial impact. OpenPay includes several tools to address involuntary churn:

  • Proactive reminders can notify customers before a renewal charge if their card is about to expire or has been declined elsewhere. This gives them time to update payment information before losing access.
  • AI-powered intelligent retries use smart logic to retry payments at optimal times, such as during business hours or around a customer’s payday. If needed, OpenPay can route transactions through backup payment processors to increase approval rates.
  • Quick customer outreach helps resolve issues fast. When a payment fails, the system sends clear, friendly emails with direct links to update billing details. These emails are designed as helpful reminders rather than threatening notices, making it more likely customers will respond.
  • Smooth cancellation experiences improve trust. When customers cancel, OpenPay offers prorated refunds and provides a clear confirmation. This approach reduces support requests, minimizes disputes, and increases the chances that customers will return later.

These workflows lead to stronger customer retention over time.

Bringing It All Together

Airwallex provides a strong foundation for fast, reliable global payments, giving businesses the confidence to transact anywhere in the world. To build on that foundation, OpenPay adds the billing power needed to create flexible pricing, gain real-time visibility into revenue, and keep customers engaged month after month. Together, they form a complete engine for predictable, scalable growth that supports every stage of a subscription business.

If you’re a business using Airwallex and want to see how OpenPay can take your business to the next level further, book a call and discover what’s possible.

‍