How to choose a payment gateway for subscription and usage billing

Most companies choose a payment gateway to get their first checkout working. The harder question comes later: can you change what you sell, where you sell it, and how you charge without rebuilding billing?

Your payment provider collects the money. Your billing system decides what each customer owes and issues the invoice. Keeping those jobs separate gives you more room to change pricing or add a provider as the business grows.

Start with how your customers pay

Begin with the customers you have, not a generic ranking of gateways. Check where your business can open a merchant account, where your customers are, which currencies you need to charge and settle in, and which payment methods they expect. A provider may operate globally without offering every method to every merchant in every market.

Compare the whole payment lifecycle

A successful first checkout is only the beginning for a subscription business. Ask each provider five questions:

• Reach: Which merchant countries, customer markets, charge currencies, settlement currencies, and local methods does your account support?
• Repeat collection: How does the customer authorize future charges? Can you collect an invoice amount that changes with usage, or does the provider expect its own fixed subscription schedule?
• Recovery: What happens when a payment fails, a method expires, or the customer needs to authenticate again?
• Finance: Can you match payments, refunds, disputes, fees, and settlements to the same invoice and customer?
• Operations: What do the APIs, webhooks, test tools, and support model cover? Who will build and maintain the connection?

Compare actual account terms and supported methods for your markets. Published prices and product coverage change; a single transaction-fee number rarely captures your full cost.

Choose a connection path, not just a provider name

Lago Cloud is the managed billing option. It handles subscriptions, usage, credits, and invoicing while a payment provider collects the invoice amount. The connection path depends on the provider.

• Stripe, Adyen, and GoCardless: Lago documents official payment integrations. Check the supported methods, regions, and account setup in the Lago payment-provider guide.
• Cashfree and Moneyhash: Lago lists community integrations. Check their maintenance and the payment events they cover before launch.
• Mollie, Authorize.net, and other providers with suitable APIs: A custom connection can pass the Lago invoice amount to the provider and return payment results to Lago. That connection must be designed and tested; a listing does not mean Lago ships a native connector or has a commercial relationship with the provider.

Mollie and Lago

If you already use Mollie, you can evaluate a custom connection that collects Lago invoice amounts through Mollie's APIs and returns payment results to Lago. Lago does not list a native Mollie connector. Mollie documents mandate-based recurring collection, including an on-demand path. Check the first payment, eligible method, mandate, failed charge, and settlement for your market. Read Mollie's recurring-payment guide.

Authorize.net (Auth.net) and Lago

Lago's payment guide names Authorize.net as an example of a provider that can receive billing information through webhooks; it does not list a native connector. Authorize.net offers Automated Recurring Billing with its own schedule, plus transaction and customer-profile APIs. If Lago calculates a variable invoice, test collecting that exact amount and returning the transaction result to Lago. Avoid two independent recurring schedules for the same charge. Explore the Authorize.net developer guides.

Keep pricing independent of collection

Imagine a software company that starts at $49 a month. Later it includes 1,000 API calls, charges for overages, and offers one enterprise customer a negotiated rate. Lago calculates each customer's charges and issues the invoice. The chosen payment provider collects the amount due. The company can change pricing in Lago while keeping its payment relationship.

You can also use more than one processor or change providers over time. That still takes planning: moving a customer's saved payment method or mandate may require their action, and every new connection needs its own payment-status and reconciliation checks.

Test one invoice end to end

Before choosing a stack, create a test customer and invoice. Follow a successful charge, a failed charge, a retry, and a refund. Match the provider's payment and settlement IDs to the Lago invoice. Then repeat with a changed invoice amount and with the payment method you expect customers to use. That short test will tell you more than a list of logos.

Read Lago's payment integration guide for the current connector list and custom path, or book a demo to discuss your payment setup.