For self storage management software
Recurring billing with a door attached. Your platform can earn on the billing.
Synapto is the embedded payments partner for UK self storage software. Storage is the cleanest recurring revenue in small business, and your software governs all of it: the cycle, the move-in offer, the insurance line, the arrears and the lock. The collection itself runs on a gateway each operator connected on their own.
How the money moves
The rent cycle your software already runs for every unit. Each stop is rent or a reception payment your operators take today, through a provider each site arranged separately. We move storage rent onto payments inside your product: each operator is settled in full, and your margin is paid monthly.
Payment status is not a report here. It is a physical event.
In most recurring businesses a failed collection generates an email. In storage it generates an overlock. The payment status has to reach the access control system, correctly and quickly, because the consequence of getting it wrong is either an occupier locked out of goods they have paid for or an arrears account still walking in and out of the building.
Your software is the only thing holding that chain together. It knows the unit, the cycle, the move-in discount that ends after eight weeks, the insurance line on top, the arrears position and the lock. What it does not hold is the collection, which sits with whichever provider each operator signed up to, on rates nobody negotiated, settling on a timetable that has nothing to do with the billing date your product set.
The commercials
What storage rent can earn your platform
Most of your operators already collect storage rent and take cards at reception, each through a provider the site arranged on its own. We move them onto payments inside your product, in your name and in planned groups of sites, and build the rent, arrears and reception products that keep them there. Each operator is settled in full for its occupiers' rent, and your margin is paid to you monthly.
Storage volume is unusually forecastable: the same occupiers, the same amounts, on the same dates, for an average stay measured in months rather than weeks. That makes it the easiest kind of flow to price properly, and it makes the revenue line it produces something you can actually put in a plan rather than a hopeful percentage.
- Your own subscription revenue on agreed terms
- A share of every recurring collection your software schedules
- Plus move-in payments, insurance and the retail counter
- Pricing agreed to the whole base, not to one site at a time
- Commercials in writing before you build anything
The rails
Four-weekly is not monthly, and the first bill is never the standing one.
Two things break generic billing tools in this sector. The first is the cycle: a great many operators bill four-weekly, which is thirteen periods a year, not twelve, and a tool that only understands calendar months quietly bills them wrong for ever. The second is the move-in offer. Half price for eight weeks then full rate is the standard acquisition deal in this trade, so the first collections differ from the standing one by design, and the schedule has to carry a changing amount without anyone touching it.
Direct Debit on UK rails handles the recurring side, on the cycle your product sets, with the insurance line and any variable extras on the same collection rather than as a second transaction. Cards cover move-in, the retail counter and anyone who wants to clear arrears on the spot. Where a card is saved and reissued, we are given the new details automatically, so the involuntary churn that costs this sector most simply stops happening.
- Four-weekly and monthly cycles, both handled as themselves
- Variable amounts, so a move-in discount ends on schedule
- Insurance and extras on the same collection, not a second one
- Direct Debit on UK rails, cards for move-in and the counter
- Expired cards refreshed automatically
- Failures reported fast enough to drive access control
The weight
Arrears, handled with care
A storage arrears case does not end in a write-off. It ends in a lien, a notice period and eventually a sale of somebody's possessions, which is a process no operator enjoys and no operator wants to reach. Everything a payments layer can do to prevent it happens early: a collection that does not fail for a stale card, a retry that is actually attempted, and a failure reported the same day rather than at month end.
When an occupier disputes a charge, they ring a named person here who can see the collection and explain it. Boarding, verification and payment support are ours. Your team goes back to being a software team.
- Failed collections retried and flagged with the reason
- Failures reported the same day, not at month end
- Operators get an account manager, not a ticket queue
- Disputes and chargebacks handled by us
- Boarding and verification ours
From first call to first revenue
Book a payments review
Bring your unit count across your operators and a typical weekly rate. We show you what the recurring flow is worth, in writing.
Scope the integration
Direct Debit and the billing schedule first, because that is where nearly all the volume is. Cards and the counter after.
Board your operators
New sites payments-native from day one, existing ones moved when it suits them, onboarded by us.
Earn every cycle
A revenue line that repeats with theirs, and an account manager looking after both of you.
Questions
It is a scheduling question rather than a payments one, and your software already holds the schedule. We collect on the dates you send, whatever the cycle, and we do not quietly normalise thirteen periods into twelve.
Not for the mechanics, and it is worth saying so plainly rather than pretending otherwise. The occupier is paying a business for a service, the operator is the merchant, and the terms of the licence sit where they always did. What we can affect is whether the money arrives on the day your schedule says it should.
Yes, as a variable amount on one collection rather than a second transaction with a second cost attached. How the operator accounts for it is their business and their broker's; from the rails' point of view it is one amount your product decided.
The operator. Each one holds their own merchant agreement and their money settles to their own bank account. We never hold their money and neither does your platform, so your regulatory position is exactly where it is today. We will walk your legal team through where every line sits before you sign anything.
A thirty-minute payments review
Bring your unit count and a typical weekly rate. We will tell you what moving your storage operators is worth and whether we are the right fit, including if we are not.