[CLOSED] Ask Me Anything [AMA]: HubSpot Payments, Jan. 20 - Jan. 28

[Maryann]

This AMA is now closed.

Hi everyone, 

I’m Maryann! I’m a senior product marketing manager for commerce at HubSpot. We just recently launched HubSpot payments, a native solution that allows HubSpot customers to accept digital payments from their buyers.

We launched HubSpot payments with three features: payment links, recurring payments, and payments-enabled quotes. This means an incredible buyer experience for your customers, as well as even more ways to streamline and grow your revenue. We’re so excited about this solution and how it will help your business. 

I want to personally invite you to our upcoming AMA where you can learn all about HubSpot payments:

[AMA] HubSpot Payments, January 20 - 28, 2022 

This AMA will be open for questions from Thursday, January 20 until Friday, January 28. All questions will be answered by Friday, January 28th.

Best part? The AMA is happening right here - drop your questions regarding HubSpot payments in this thread. 

Not sure what to ask? Here are a few sample questions:

1. How can I enroll in HubSpot payments?
2. How do payments help improve the buyer experience?
3. What are some use cases or examples of customers using HubSpot payments? 

Look forward to chatting with you in the thread and hearing all of your questions! 

[Chendrix]

1. Are there assets available that show how this looks from a customer experience? I have looked at your blog articles and other assets on Youtube but they are all focused around HSPayments back-end experience. 
2. Are there assets around what's possible through workflows with HSPayments? We are currently connecting Stripe and Hubspot with DepositFix. There are options to have if/then statements based on payment parameters such as price, quantity, date, etc. 

3. Can you speak to how the contact data keeps a 1:1 stream with Stripe customer profiles. They are different databases with different contacts. If someone updates their email address or a contact is merged in Hubspot, what happens in stripe? 

[JackCoopersmith]

Thanks for the questions here @Chendrix! Taking them one by one here:

1. If you click on Sales > Payments you'll see a "see how it works" button which will give a quick walkthrough (assuming you haven't already set up payments). Additionally, we recently launched these HubSpot Academy videos that also walk through the tool 
2. Great question - one of HubSpot Payments' major value props is the fact that it plugs into everything else within HubSpot. When it comes to workflows, you'll see a new subscription-based workflow type that you can use for any recurring payments. Additionally, there's an inherent link between payments and quotes as well as payments and deals, allowing you to also run deal and quote based workflows around payment data. As I'm sure you can imagine, as the payments product continues to expand, we'll see more and more options opening up on this front, though there are many now! Feel free to let me know if you have any other questions around this. If you'd be willing to share your use case after getting up and running, I'm sure everyone viewing, including myself and the rest of the Product Team, would love to hear about it!
3. I think this is more of a stripe integration question as opposed to a HubSpot payments question. Check out Stripe's role with HubSpot payments here. When it comes to the data sync integration with Stripe, this is indeed a bi-directional integration (check out the table towards the bottom of this integration page to see what syncs and what you can do with this integration)

[janinelyman]

Our customers need to be able to choose the quantity of the product they are purchasing.  Is there an ETA on this feature addition?

[JackCoopersmith]

Hi @janinelyman, thanks for the question here! This is indeed on our product roadmap, I'd say that we can expect to see this feature in the first half of this year. Are there any specific functionalities around this or anything else that would be particularly important for you all? If so, we'd love to hear from you right here if you don't mind! Obviously feel free to reach out directly as well 

[janinelyman]

@JackCoopersmith , thanks for the response!  This is wonderful news!  I can suggest a few basic features that would be a bridge between Hubspot and a full blown reservation system.  In order of importance:

1. The ability for customer to increase the unit amount of product
2. Cart function to allow customers to buy more than one product at a time
3. Add discount code option in the customer-facing payments page
4. Ability to collect custom property fields in the payments page when you want to collect more than billing info (right now it is a two-part workflow... fill out the form then get redirected to payment link or the other way around).  Especially for an "I agree to the terms" check box... or a signature check box, like with quotes.
5. Add all quotes paid to the payments activity log

Thanks for asking for feedback 🙂  I hope this is helpful!!

[JackCoopersmith]

Super helpful @janinelyman, really appreciate you sending all of this along! I think you're going to like what you're going to be seeing out of HubSpot payments in the near future based off of what you mentioned above 😉 

One other question for you I'm curious about - would you need HubSpot to speak to something like an inventory management system? Let's say someone selects 10 items but you all only have 5 available... how would you want to see that handled in an ideal world (assuming this is a situation you'd find yourself in)?

[janinelyman]

@JackCoopersmith ... Inventory management was #6 on my list at first but didn't want to come off as greedy 🤑

This would be AMAZING to have as an additional function built into HubSpot. 

As for talking to other inventory management systems... I think it would be nice to have but there are so many out there.  In a former role, I worked with many of the larger names but only one that truly solved the customer's need for agility in inventory management.  I think the bigger names have integrations through Zapier, so that you could be a temporary solution that allows direct bookings through established software as well as bookings/purchases through HubSpot ... while still keeping up with inventory. 

However, if you are looking for an in-house solution, I would be happy to put you in contact with the team I'm talking about.  They are small, agile, and they are inventory management magicians! 🕴️

[JackCoopersmith]

To quote Gordon Gekko in this circumstance @janinelyman, greed is good - we want to ensure we're building what our customers actually want! As I'm sure you can imagine, there's quite a bit going on in our world right now, so I'll loop back with the team on my end and we may be reaching out directly 😀

[AlKo]

Can you ballpark an ETA for this feature in Canada? 

Thanks! 

[JackCoopersmith]

Hi @AlKo! This is a particularly tough one to ballpark because there are so many things that factor into international expansion and all of the regulatory requirements that come with it in the payments space. I can tell you that this is something that we're actively researching and we're hoping to have more clarity around a plan later this year, so definitely keep an eye out for this as we move through the year!

[twengler]

HubSpot payments wont' work for 501c3's. What's up with that?

My clients are not getting approved to use Payments if they are 501c3.

[JackCoopersmith]

Hi @twengler! We're excited that our non-profit users are eager for HubSpot payments. As we all know, HubSpot payments is a new tool of ours and we're not currently built to support this specific segment of organizations yet. This is something we're getting feedback on and are actively exploring and we're aiming to have more clarity around plans to bring non-profits onto HubSpot payments later this year. Be sure to keep your eyes peeled on this front as we're absolutely going to see a lot of product and feature releases around payments this year and beyond!

[StewC]

@JackCoopersmith , what's the best way to give the team feedback re non-profits? For example, how to accept a donation of 'any amount' in addition to specific price points is a gotta-have.

[JackCoopersmith]

@StewC honestly this is the place! I sit on the Product Team and I know many other folks who do are also watching this thread. The feature you're referring to where a given donor can enter in a custom amount isn't at the top of our product roadmap right now, however it's something that we're definitely getting feedback on (this is of course a pretty important feature for our non-profit customers). 

Are there any specific functionalities or things that you'd like to see with this feature? Or any other specific features that you think would be especially useful for you all? We'd love to hear any and all feedback you have!

[twengler]

I have a client that is in the US. Payments will not work for him. Denied by HubSpot

Why? 

They are 501c3. 

Per email from HubSpot:

Hi Ray,

We are unable to approve your account for Payments at this time as we are currently not able to support non-profit organizations. With non profits there are certain requirements that we need to have set up. We are working on this and other requirements.

We hope to have the capabilities to provide payments processing to additional business types such as non-profits in the future, and will advise once this is available.

Thank you,

HubSpot Payments Underwriting Team

HubSpot - what's going on here? Can you check into this and update this thread ASAP?

[elizsmith]

Is there a timeline on when this will be available to companies in the travel industry? 

[Maryann]

Hi @elizsmith! There's no specific timeline on this one. As of today, HubSpot payments is powered in part by Stripe, and they don’t accept payments for some types of businesses. You can find more details and examples in Stripe’s restricted businesses list. More on eligibility over on this Knowledge Base article! 

[dsecareanu]

1. Any ETA on rolling payments to other parts of the world? I see it available in my account (Europe), but I haven't tried to complete the process so far.
2. Will there be an option added to the Stripe data sync to sync also deals/invoices/products from other sources but managed in Stripe (e.g., a subscription from a newsletter service or something similar)?
3. What are some use cases for HubSpot payments for services, subscriptions, consulting, website pricing packages (HS CMS)?

[JackCoopersmith]

Thanks for the questions here @dsecareanu. Taking the one by one:

1. We hear there is excitement to rollout payments globally, which is great! Many countries have their own regulatory requirements for payments that add complexities to expansion. There is on-going research about global expansion that will continue in 2022 with a plan coming probably mid to late next year
2. This isn't as much of a HubSpot payments-related question, so I wanted to loop in @velliott who can speak more to this. Thanks in advance for the help here Tori!
3. I'd say there are a lot of use cases here, HubSpot payments can be used as your main payment processor to power your organization so it can cover all of those bases. You can process both one time and recurring transactions via two routes - either by connecting payments with quotes or by using payment links. The quotes route is more of a classic QTC/CPQ motion and payment links can be used in a number of different ways, one of which being our CMS (or external pages) as you're able to easily add them to webpages for things like consulting packages and more. With payment links, you'll also notice the option to redirect to a given page. For example, let's say you wanted to offer a block of consulting time - someone would be able to purchase that time block and then book that time with our meetings tool immediately. We've seen a lot of creativity regarding using payment links so far, often opening up completely new revenue streams for companies. If anyone reading would be willing to share how they're using payment links or payments with quotes, go ahead and post below!

[velliott]

Thanks, @JackCoopersmith. 

Great question, @dsecareanu. We understand how important payments are for you and many businesses. That’s why we’ll be focusing primarily on expanding our new HubSpot Payments system in our Quoting tool. While we will still maintain our Stripe integration, we don’t have any immediate plans to expand its capability. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.