How to comply with Visa's trial subscription requirements

MemberSpace makes it easy for you to comply!

Here is what you need to do on your end to make sure you are in compliance with Visa's new rules:

1. Make sure you provide details of the goods and services in your existing plan's optional Additional Plan Description. To get there, go to your MemberSpace account > click Pricing > edit any existing plan.

   
   

   Toggle ON Additional Plan Description:

   
   

   

   
   

   This description will show when members are first joining a plan (before entering payment) as well as in your "Welcome", "Trial Is Starting", and "Cancelation" Notification Emails.

   
   

   Also, generally, it's a good idea to have a Terms & Conditions page or document that you have members agree to (via a custom signup field) when they create their account — specifically, one that describes your subscription and free trial offer. Here is an example from Stripe.

2. Make sure you keep these Notification Emails of ours enabled: Trial Is Starting, Successful Charge Receipt, and Welcome Email.

   
   

   To check, go to your MemberSpace account > click on Customize in the left navigation > click on Notification Emails > and then find the email you want to check and click it:

   
   

   

   
   

   

   
   

   We use these emails to comply with most of the items Visa requires such as the date the member will be billed and how to cancel.

3. We will automatically send the default "Welcome Email" whenever someone joins a plan (or starts a trial). If you add Welcome Emails per plan, we will send those instead for each plan.

   
   

   We will automatically send a new email called "Trial Is Starting" whenever someone starts a trial on any plan of yours (and whenever they switch to a different plan's trial).

   
   

   We will also automatically send the "Successful Charge Receipt" email any time a member of yours is actually charged via a plan.

4. This entire step only applies if you've modified Notification Emails prior to May 1, 2020. If you haven't, skip to Step 5.

   If you've previously modified your Welcome Email and/or Successful Charge Receipt email, you'll need to make sure both of those emails are enabled and reset.

   
   

   

   
   

   If you've added any custom wording or styling to those emails, we recommend copying that to a separate note or document before resetting the email. Then after you reset, add your changes back in since we'll have new important content and variables included in these emails by default now.

   
   

   If you've previously created a Welcome Email for a specific plan, you will need to copy that text, paste it to a separate note or document, DELETE the email, and then recreate that email. There isn't an option to reset in that case, unfortunately.

5. Make sure your Statement Descriptor in Stripe is 10 characters or less. You can check and edit that here.

   
   

   This is important because Stripe has a 22-character limit for the Statement Descriptor, and when a member's trial ends, the Descriptor will be appended to include  *TRIAL OVER which will take up 11 of your 22 available characters.