White Paper

Unlocking Cost Savings in Recurring Billing for Scaling Businesses

Introduction: The Stripe Journey from Startup to Scale

Many mid sized and enterprise level companies began their journey with Stripe as their trusted payment processor. Stripe’s robust infrastructure, global reach, and developer friendly APIs made it the default choice for startups and fast growing companies. As these businesses introduced subscription based pricing, Stripe Billing became a natural addition to manage recurring payments, invoicing, and subscription logic.

As companies scale, however, this initial convenience often turns into long term inertia. Stripe Billing remains in place not because it is the most cost effective solution, but because switching billing systems feels risky, complex, or disruptive. For many finance and engineering teams, billing becomes a “set it and forget it” component of the stack, even as costs grow substantially with revenue.

The Hidden Cost of Billing at Scale

At low volumes, billing fees are easy to ignore. But for mid tier and enterprise businesses processing hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in recurring revenue, small differences in basis points compound quickly.

Stripe Billing typically charges 70 basis points or more on recurring revenue. For a company processing $500,000 per month, that equates to $3,500 in monthly billing fees. Over the course of a year, that is $42,000 in billing costs alone. For larger companies, the numbers scale even faster.

These costs often go unnoticed because they are embedded in infrastructure rather than line item expenses. Yet they represent pure overhead that does not improve conversion, reliability, or customer experience.

Introducing ChaChing.io: Purpose Built for Scale

ChaChing.io was built specifically to solve this problem for scaling businesses. We provide a modern recurring billing engine designed to replace Stripe Billing while keeping Stripe as the underlying payment processor.

Our pricing is simple and transparent. ChaChing.io charges 35 basis points, roughly half the cost of Stripe Billing. For companies with meaningful recurring revenue, this translates into immediate and significant savings without sacrificing reliability or security.

To eliminate the biggest barrier to switching, we built a one click Stripe migrator. Existing subscriptions are migrated in seconds with no downtime and no customer disruption. There is no need to re-create plans manually, no re-onboarding of customers, and no interruption to cash flow.

Understanding the Stripe Ecosystem: Payments vs Billing

To understand how ChaChing.io works, it is critical to understand a common misconception about Stripe.

Stripe started as a payment processor. Its core role is to securely store card data, tokenize payment methods, process charges, and handle compliance requirements like PCI. This is the foundation of Stripe’s platform and remains its primary function.

Stripe Billing was introduced later as an additional product layered on top of this payment infrastructure. Its role is to manage subscription logic such as billing cycles, proration, invoicing, retries, and usage based pricing. Importantly, Stripe Billing does not own or store card data. It simply instructs Stripe’s payment engine when and how to charge existing payment methods.

Although these products are marketed together, they are not tightly coupled at a technical level.

Decoupling Stripe Billing from Stripe Payments

Many companies assume that Stripe Billing is inseparable from Stripe Payments. In reality, the two are distinct layers that can be decoupled.

ChaChing.io replaces only the billing layer. Stripe continues to handle all payment processing, card storage, tokenization, and security. All customer payment methods remain on Stripe. Tokens never leave Stripe. New subscriptions and existing subscriptions continue to use the same Stripe stored payment methods.

From a security and compliance perspective, nothing changes. ChaChing.io never touches raw card data and remains fully out of PCI scope. There is no need to migrate cards, collect payment details, or expose sensitive data.

Functionally, Stripe remains the system of record for payments. ChaChing.io simply becomes the system of record for billing logic.

Why This Architecture Matters

This architecture removes nearly all of the risk typically associated with switching billing providers.

There is no customer facing disruption. Cards remain on file. Failed payment handling and retries continue to leverage Stripe’s infrastructure. Finance teams retain Stripe reporting and reconciliation. Engineering teams do not need to rebuild payment flows.

The only change is a reduction in billing fees and a billing engine designed specifically for companies that have outgrown startup scale tooling.

A Strategic Upgrade, Not a Rip and Replace

For mid tier and enterprise businesses, billing is no longer a product feature. It is infrastructure. And infrastructure should be optimized for cost, reliability, and scale.

ChaChing.io is not a replacement for Stripe. It is a strategic companion to Stripe that allows businesses to keep the payment processor they trust while eliminating unnecessary billing overhead.

Conclusion: A Smarter Way to Scale

As companies grow, the tools that once enabled speed can quietly become a tax on success. Stripe Billing is often one of those tools.

ChaChing.io gives scaling businesses a way to reclaim control of their recurring revenue economics without introducing risk or complexity. By decoupling billing from payments, keeping all card data securely on Stripe, and offering a seamless migration path, ChaChing.io makes switching not only possible, but obvious.

For companies paying tens of thousands of dollars per year in billing fees, the question is no longer why switch. It is, why wait.