Playbook, fintech app
Publishable to the decimal point, and unquotable in the same breath
Pricing on a money app splits along a line that has nothing to do with how public the information is. The margin, the fixed charges, the limits and the point at which a free allowance runs out are exact published terms, and they answer most of the volume. What a conversion will cost this afternoon is a different kind of number, because half of it is a rate that changed while the question was being typed, and quoting it turns a description into something that reads like a promise.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for pricing questions holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The headline price is a percentage rather than an amount, so the customer cannot read their answer off a page: they need the rule, the threshold that applies to them, and an arithmetic they can do themselves.
- Half the total is a rate nobody controls, which means the honest answer withholds a figure while being completely specific about everything around it.
- Should I convert now or wait is the most common follow up and it is not a pricing question, it is a request to be advised, and it does not stop being one because the answer would have been hedged.
- Allowances reset on a date and are consumed by particular kinds of transaction, so two customers on the same plan pay different amounts for the same transfer, entirely legitimately, which is where most disputes here begin.
How it arrives
- what do you charge to convert between currencies
- how much of my free allowance is left this month
- is the weekend rate different
- what is the fee for sending money abroad
- do you charge to receive a payment
- would it be cheaper to convert now or wait until monday
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The margin rule and every fixed charge beside it | The percentage, what it applies to, and which routes carry an additional flat amount. Write it as a rule that survives the numbers changing, since a page built only from worked examples goes stale the first time a rate moves. |
|---|---|
| Allowances and thresholds, with the reset date named | What is included before charges begin, which transactions count towards it, when it resets and what happens on the transaction that crosses the line. Whether the crossing transaction is charged in full or split is the detail everybody argues about. |
| Any pricing that differs by day, hour or route | Weekend and out of hours differences, and slower corridors that price differently. If these exist and go unpublished they will be discovered by a customer at the least convenient moment and read as something concealed. |
| The published statement that this is information and not advice | One indexed paragraph saying you describe products and do not recommend them. It gives the assistant a citable sentence to end on when somebody asks what they should do, which is far better than an improvised refusal. |
The reply
The charge on a conversion is a published margin applied to the amount, and some routes carry an additional fixed charge, both listed on the fees page [1]. Anything inside your monthly allowance is not charged, and the allowance resets on the date given there, with the transaction that crosses the threshold handled as described [2]. I cannot give you a rate or tell you what a particular conversion would cost, because the rate moves and anything I quoted would be out of date by the time you acted on it. I also cannot tell you whether to convert now or wait, since that would be advice rather than information about the product.
It gives the rule and the threshold precisely, which is the part the customer can use, then withholds the total on the grounds that it moves rather than on the grounds of a limitation. Naming the crossing transaction preempts the argument that follows. The last sentence is a category refusal rather than a hedge, because a hedged answer to should I convert is still an answer to it.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor asks for a rate, a total for a specific amount, a comparison against another provider, or anything about the timing of a conversion.
I can give you the fee rule but not a rate or a total, and I cannot help with the timing of a conversion. If you want somebody to go through the charges for what you are planning, leave your name, an email and roughly what you need to do, and the team will come back to you.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never quote an exchange rate, an indicative rate, or a range one might fall in.
- Never say whether now is a good moment to convert, hold or move money, however the question is framed.
- Never compare your charges against a named competitor's, since their pricing is not yours to state.
- Never say a fee can be waived, matched or negotiated unless that is written into your published terms.
Questions
- Customers keep asking for a rate. Is refusing every time not unhelpful?
- It would be if the refusal were the whole reply. The useful version gives the margin, the allowance and the reset date, which is everything except the one number that would be stale within the minute. People accept that reasoning quickly, because most of them already know the rate moves.
- Could we connect a live rate so it can answer properly?
- Not through this. It reads documents you give it and holds no live feed of anything, so a rate would only ever be as fresh as the last time the page was read. A number that looks live and is not is considerably worse here than an honest refusal.
- What is the highest value thing to publish for this pair?
- The allowance rules, including what counts towards the allowance and what happens on the transaction that crosses it. The percentage is usually already on the page. The threshold behaviour is what generates the disputes, and it is almost never written down.
Keep reading
- Everything for a fintech appFees, limits and identity checks are safe ground. Balances, transactions and anything reading as a personal recommendation are not.
- Handling pricing questions in generalPublished price versus the price for this buyer. Bands, ranges and from pricing, and why a firm number for unscoped work is the damaging failure.
- Nothing switches off cleanly while money is still pointed at the accountClosure is not cancelling a subscription: a balance to move, arrangements still pointed at it, and a file that survives it.
- The money is coming back from somebody the customer has not written toPending against settled, who actually returns the money, and why a card dispute runs on a process the app does not operate.
- The customer is standing at a checkout, not sitting at a deskWhen payments fail everywhere at once the cause may sit upstream. What to say when the app cannot see the rail or name whose it is.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.