Membership Renewals: Ripe for Automation
In the age of Amazon Prime and Paypal, we expect automation and ease in all of our digital experiences. Take a moment, and think about what the process is like for your athletes to register for their clubs, and for their federations. Is it quick? Is it easy? Does it automatically renew?
Here at Interpodia we have been thinking about these questions for the past ten years, and have developed a robust automated renewal system for sport organizations, clubs and events.
From Then to Now
Back in the old days, renewals were tricky because organizations had to find ways to securely store their credit card information. Now, technology allows us to use payment vaults that releases us and our clients from the risk of storing any payment data.
The landscape is less treacherous now. Technology also enables us to work around credit card expiry dates. The majority of modern credit card issuers follow protocol whereby renewal or subscription type transactions will be processed with an expired card as long as card number is still active.
Interpodia’s Expedited and Automated Renewal Processes
Automated renewal is commonplace in most membership management systems. Once we introduce the concept of sport and the requirements of sport organizations, however, it brings complexity that many software platforms cannot provide.
Sports bring complexity to automated renewals in the form of:
Competition & ability categories
Integration with international federations
Collection of new declarations and codes of conducts
Acknowledgment of risk documents
Printed or digital membership cards
Photo approval processes
Changes in pricing or structure of memberships year on year
These are a handful of the hurdles that Interpodia took into consideration during the development of this feature, and this is what separates our solution from a normal membership management platform.
We have been doing some form of fast-track renewal processing over the past 3-4 years. We have spent a lot of time putting a magnifying glass on this feature. Making it faster for people to renew and enabling people to agree to automated renewal during their registration. Our claim to fame is 50,000 auto-renewals in one morning.

The Benefits of Fast Track & Automated Renewals
Some of the benefits of automatic renewals can be seen below…
Benefits for Sport Administrators
- Reduces the number of telephone, paper, on-site renewals (auto-renewal helps mitigate that)
- Decreases the spike that occurs just before the years’ first competition
- Less panicked phone calls the night before a competition
Benefits for Sport Organizations
- Expedites cash flow for your organization or club
- Reduces attrition
- Better athlete experience
They say the cost of acquiring new customers is said to be as much as ten times the cost of retaining existing customers. The same could probably be said for athletes. Sport is a competitive business, and parents face many choices of sport for their children. It is important to remove any barriers parents might face when signing their child up for a sport.
A second point to consider, many sports have an aging demographic. The younger generation of athletes expect and are accustomed to fast, easy, and personalized user experiences. Interpodia’s technology helps removes frictions for parents and athletes on both accounts.
Interpodia’s goal, alongside our sport organizations, is to reduce the friction in the registration process year on year. To help your sport grow, make athletes safe and happy, and to save you time and money. Automated renewals is a key feature that helps remove friction from your athlete’s user experience.
The more complex the sport, the more careful consideration is required to make automated and fast track renewals possible for an organization.
Fortunately, with Interpodia as your strategic partner, you can unlock limitations around renewals and much much more.
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