Butter vs. Vindicia: Which is best for your business?

Globally, failed payments are estimated to be a $443 billion problem, affecting up to 5% of top-line ARR for the average merchant.

Vindicia and Butter both serve to minimize payment failures, but each has its solution to recovering failed payments and avoiding involuntary churn.

In this article, we’ll break down both payment recovery solutions, with strengths and weaknesses, to help you make the right choice for your business.

What services does Vindicia offer?

Vindicia is a payment recovery solution serving B2C brands. They offer their clients insights into failed payments and support merchants after their in-house efforts to recover lost revenue have come up short.

Vindicia provides two core products for its customers:

• Vindicia Retain: A payment recovery solution using AI and machine learning to recapture repeat transaction failures automatically.
• Vindicia Subscribe (formerly Vindicia CashBox): A platform to improve key B2C subscription metrics — from acquisition and billing to retention and expansion.

Pros of using Vindicia:

• Last-Mile Recovery Solution: Vindicia supplements existing payment recovery strategies by resolving issues after a set period of time.
• On-Demand Support: Merchants can rely on Vindicia to target transactions that meet specific criteria, such as processing errors or a certain number of retries on its internal systems.

Cons of using Vindicia:

• Limited Early Recovery Efforts:  With Vindicia, merchants must first attempt to retry failed payments on their own. However, failures left unresolved for 30+ days are more likely to be flagged and canceled by the customer, making it crucial to recover as fast as possible.
• Conflicting Retry Strategies: Vindicia creates a retry strategy from scratch that operates alongside a merchant’s attempts to retry failed payments. Merchants that over-retry risk not just their payment health but also the effectiveness of Vindicia’s approach.

What services does Butter offer?

Butter is a cutting-edge payments technology platform specifically designed to address the challenge of failed payment recovery. Unlike competitors, Butter is dedicated to perfecting recovery through advanced machine learning, resulting in an average savings of 5% in total ARR.

Butter uses machine learning to create the customized retry schedules most likely to succeed.

To provide optimal support to our clients, Butter offers a specialized suite of services:

• AI-supported Payment Recovery: Our proprietary machine-learning algorithms consider 128 distinct variables, including bank details, currency, and time of purchase. This approach tailors custom retry schedules for each payment, ensuring the most effective and personalized recovery strategies for businesses.
• Low Maintenance: Butter works best in the background, with little manual effort required to keep your team informed on payment recovery efforts.
• Ongoing Algorithmic Improvements: We continue improving our models to accommodate new market dynamics. This adaptability makes it an ideal choice for businesses aiming to grow or swiftly adapt, avoiding the pitfalls of "one size fits all" or "set it and forget it" tactics.

Pros of using Butter:

• Targeted Focus: We are the only solution on the market 100% dedicated to solving failed payment recovery by continuously improving ML models from Day 1.
• Advanced AI models: Our models deliver advanced, highly customized retry strategies that improve with every transaction — prioritizing successful recoveries and minimizing accidental customer churn.
• Multiple ML Models: A team of data experts employs dozens of models simultaneously to identify the most effective approach for your business for 5% top-line ARR growth on average.

Cons of using Butter:

• Limited Direct Customer Communication: Because we focus on recovering your payments, Butter may not be suitable for businesses looking to communicate directly with customers regarding failed payments.

Which solution works best for your failed payments?

Interested in learning more about Butter’s approach to payment recovery?

Contact us today for a free payment health assessment. We’ll help you understand the full scope of your failed payments and show you how Butter can help.