Every merchant learns this too late:

Michael_recurCrypto — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 23:15:18 +0000

Most merchants learn this too late:

If a third party controls your payment flow, they also controls access to your revenue.

For online businesses, this is a real risk.

Too many chargebacks?

Frozen.

Volume grows too fast?

Frozen.

Your product category looks risky?

Frozen.

Customer disputes increase?

Frozen.

Sometimes there is a clear reason.

Sometimes there isn’t.

But the result is the same:

Your revenue is sitting somewhere else, and someone else decides when you can access it.

The hidden problem with recurring payments

Most SaaS founders think about payments only at launch.

They integrate a card processor, connect subscriptions, add a pricing page, and move on.

That works well enough at the beginning.

But as the business grows, payment infrastructure becomes a risk layer:

failed renewals
expired cards
bank blocks
chargebacks
retry loops
payout delays
account reviews
frozen funds

A lot of what companies call “churn” is not always product churn.

Sometimes it is just payment failure.

The customer wanted to stay.

The product still had value.

The subscription should have renewed.

But the payment failed.

The merchant has very little control

This is the uncomfortable part.

If the payment layer sits between the customer and the merchant, then the merchant does not fully control the payment relationship.

The processor can approve, decline, delay, review, or freeze the flow.

That may be acceptable for some businesses.

But for subscription businesses, recurring revenue is the core asset.

Losing access to that flow can be existential.

What would a different model look like?

Instead of relying only on card rails, recurring payments can be built around stablecoins.

The model is simple:

Customer wallet → merchant wallet.

For subscriptions, that means:

the customer approves the subscription
the first payment happens on-chain
future charges follow the subscription rules
funds go directly to the merchant wallet
no custody layer holds merchant revenue

This removes several failure classes from the traditional card model:

no card expiration
no card chargebacks
no payout hold
no processor holding funds in the middle

Why USDC makes sense for subscriptions

Crypto payments are often associated with volatility.

That is not ideal for recurring billing.

Stablecoins solve a large part of that problem.

USDC gives merchants a dollar-denominated payment rail while still keeping the benefits of wallet-based settlement.

For SaaS, digital products, AI tools, creator subscriptions, and web3 products, this can be a cleaner model.

The goal is not to replace every payment system overnight.

The goal is to add a payment option that gives merchants more control.

What we are building

I am building RecurCrypto, a USDC recurring payments system for merchants.

The idea is simple:

USDC subscriptions
wallet-to-merchant settlement
no custody
no card rails
no chargebacks
no funds held in the middle

Merchants can create a plan, generate a checkout link, and let customers subscribe with a wallet.

You can see it here:

https://www.recurcrypto.com

Final thought

Recurring revenue should not depend entirely on permission from a third party.

If a business earns revenue, it should not have to wonder whether that revenue will be held, frozen, delayed, or blocked.

Card payments are not going away.

But subscription businesses deserve another rail.

One where the merchant keeps control of the payment relationship.

Most SaaS churn isn’t real churn (it’s failed payments)

Michael_recurCrypto — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 19:19:37 +0000

Hey everyone 👋

I’ve been working on subscription systems recently, and something stood out pretty quickly:

Most SaaS “churn” isn’t actually churn.

It’s failed payments.

What really happens

A typical subscription flow looks solid on paper:

user subscribes
billing runs monthly
revenue grows

But in reality:

cards expire
banks decline valid transactions
payments fail silently

And the worst part?

Users don’t even know it happened.

The hidden problem

From the outside, it looks like churn.

But internally, it’s just broken billing infrastructure.

Even with retries, emails, and dunning flows, a lot of revenue is simply lost.

A different approach

I started exploring wallet-based subscriptions instead of cards.

Instead of charging cards:

users connect a wallet
approve a subscription once
payments execute automatically

No card details.

No bank approvals.

What changes

The differences are pretty interesting:

no card expiration
no bank declines
no chargebacks
global by default

It’s a completely different model.

Still early, but promising

I’m not saying this replaces everything.

But for global SaaS / AI tools / web products, it solves a real problem.

Less friction.

Fewer failures.

More predictable revenue.

Curious what others are doing

If you're building a SaaS:

👉 how are you handling recurring payments?

Stripe?
custom billing?
crypto?

More context

I wrote a deeper breakdown here if you’re curious:

https://www.recurcrypto.com/crypto-recurring-payments

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