What inspired you to cofound Pai?

We noticed that many Mexican companies were struggling with online recurring payments. After some extensive research, we realized technology hadn’t kept up with the consumer habits shifting from one-time purchases to subscriptions. We want to help companies in Latin America more easily enter and succeed in the growing subscription economy without any pain points.

What is your team focused on these days?

We want businesses to maximize the impact of recurring billing, which is why we’ve partnered with Stripe. Working together we can help quickly and accurately implement Stripe Billing and take advantage of its many features like invoicing, revenue optimization, and automated reconciliation. We are also developing apps that will appear in the Stripe App Marketplace so businesses can further optimize their subscription revenue.

What are the biggest challenges companies face today when it comes to subscription management, specifically in Latin American businesses?

Implementing subscription technology and a lack of invoicing tools that adhere to local policy standards are the two biggest challenges that we’re helping our customers overcome.

We can also automate sending emails and WhatsApp messages to companies when customer payments have failed in order to signal the risk of involuntary churn. WhatsApp is the primary communication platform in Mexico and Latin America, and using this tool has been incredibly successful in helping our customers.

How will subscription management software change over the next 5–10 years with the use of AI?

AI will help uncover additional insights about customers—their product needs and usage, and their overall happiness with the subscription for example—that companies can use to better serve the needs of users. These insights will also lead to a better understanding of customers over the long haul, with more resources and data to inform their models and revenue operations.

How do recurring payments models differ across industries?

There are nuances, but the fundamentals ultimately rely on the same premise: Subscriptions are a recurring relationship between a company and the customer. The difference is how the product is delivered. For example, in retail, a box of items is sent to the subscriber each month. The retailer has to manage the recurring payment, limit involuntary churn, and in this instance, the shipping and delivery.

Streaming and entertainment are other examples of subscription services that have evolved over the last decade, and most people consume their TV shows and movies through multiple platforms running on backend revenue software.

How do you think about payments in relation to delighting your users?

Payments are crucial to delighting and maintaining customers. If a person loves a company and wants to make a purchase or subscription, but the payment fails, then the customer could leave. Failed payments hurt companies. Approximately 35% of the total churn of a company is involuntary, and it’s sad to lose customers because of a technical issue or a failed payment.

Our goal is to avoid involuntary churn, so companies can receive 100% of the sales and the customer can remain happy.

Can you explain how Pai works with Stripe and where you’re seeing the most value from this partnership in removing subscription complexity for businesses?

Pai is a member of the Stripe Partner Ecosystem. Our goal is to help companies implement Stripe to their maximum potential by assisting with everything in the onboarding process. We are also developing applications in the Stripe App Marketplace that improve recurring payments processes. For example, one app we are currently working on is focused on invoicing within Mexico. This allows companies in the country to charge recurring payments with Stripe Billing, offering automatic invoices and custom emails to inform the customer of a payment, and saving the company many hours of manual labor.

How has Stripe helped Pai’s overall goals?

Stripe is a great partner and provides a number of resources to implement its financial infrastructure easily. We are also able to share our knowledge and experience with Stripe, whether that is key learnings from a new user or overcoming new payments challenges.

Stripe’s mission to increase the GDP of the internet is one that we closely resonate with. We are proud to work with a company that believes payments and technology infrastructure are core to the economy.