Case study: ON THAT ASS

Pairing with Payvision/ING for flawless recurring payments

Illustration of a pair of shorts with a heart pattern on them
Phoebe Lown
Phoebe Lown

Content Writer

Founded in 2014, Netherlands based, ON THAT ASS brings a daring concept to the table: banning boring boxer shorts.

ON THAT ASS allows members to order high-quality underwear from an array of fun designs right to their doorstep every month, on a subscription-only basis. With the brand's community surpassing a quarter of a million members after 6 years, the idea has revolutionized how people buy underwear.

Looking to grow their customer base even further overseas, ON THAT ASS needed a payments provider to facilitate monthly recurring payments from various local payment methods. We sat down with Julia, General Manager at ON THAT ASS, Bradley, Technical Integrations Manager at Payvision, and Martijn, Sales Manager at ING to find out how the collaboration went.

Friends reunited

From the start, the ON THAT ASS team was already collaborating with ING and Payvision for their direct debiting and PSP (payment service providers) solutions. The problem was that when ON THAT ASS were looking to grow in markets that Payvision couldn't fully facilitate. “We were still in the process of adding those markets to our PSP,” says Martijn, “unfortunately, we had to part ways and ON THAT ASS went with another PSP.”

The product team at Payvision then spent the time upgrading the technology, and after about a year, ING gave ON THAT ASS the heads up.

“We also were partnering with ING for our other banking requirements, once they said Payvision could help us out once again, it was a no brainer,” says Julie, General Manager, ON THAT ASS. “We put a lot of trust in ING and missed the relationship with Payvision, so we started discussing a new partnership.”

Once the collaboration was back on its feet, it was full steam ahead!

Tokenization for subscriptions and recurring payments

Making a complex onboarding look easy

ON THAT ASS has a unique concept that translates into an elaborate payment set-up. The fashion brand is purely subscription-based, with a free trial to boot. Bradley reiterates, “this onboarding was more complicated than a standard merchant. When you have recurring payments, the bank is going to make all the payment requests on the same day per month.” Bradley continues, “the trouble was with migrating the tokens from the previous PSP in time for the next billing cycle.”

Tokenization is replacing cardholder details such as the primary account number (PAN) with a randomized number, called a token. Bradley mentions, “We had to decide whether to migrate the tokens or issue new ones.”

The risk with issuing new tokens was that some customers could be left out, but the decision was to go with the migration, with a race to complete it before the next billing cycle. Bradley continues, “once the tokens were in our system, ON THAT ASS then needs to add them to their database; luckily, they have a swift development team, so we managed to complete the migration in time.”

As well as a race against time, the team didn't know if the migration would succeed. “It's not something you can test for,” says Bradley, “you can make one or two tests, but it's on D day when the payment requests are sent; we'd know for sure if the migration had gone smoothly.” 

Martijn laughs, “and it wasn't just the migration that was complex, for all the payment methods that the merchant offers to offer, a recurring channel goes with it and settlement reports for each country.”

The solutions also need to be scalable so the merchant can smoothly proceed with their international growth ambitions, which is quite challenging to set up. Martijn continues, “luckily, Bradley is always on hand to guide the merchants, and he can make complicated processes look easy!”

A smooth 'go-live'

When it was time to 'go-live,' Bradley and the onboarding team were in hand to ensure everything went smoothly. “We did the 'go-live' at around 1:00 am, which was tiring,” says Bradley “luckily, everything went as expected, and there weren't any issues!”

And how’s the solution working out?

“ON THAT ASS had their first big sale with the new solution, says Martijn, “with a limited-edition release, which people go crazy for, there are thousands of orders made within seconds.” Continuing, “the results were good and now we know that the solution is a success, we've been slowly onboarding new countries to the payments mix.”

Both teams still have regular check-ins to make sure the solution is going well and improve it. “The solution is working good, and we're in direct contact with the Payvisions tech team. Any issues our customers face is resolved fast,” says Julia Marcolina, general manager ON THAT ASS, finalizing, “we're able to full-fill our international growth plans. It's nice to have the Payvision team on our side throughout.”