Automating your B2C payments using 1oT Terminal API

By now, we have established that 1oT provides global connectivity to IoT devices. However, the standard practice shows that our customers are not the end-users of their IoT products.

These customers use 1oT's SIM cards to provide an end-to-end service (a connected device) to their product users by attaching SIM to their smart devices before deployment. In these cases, 1oT's customers are wondering how can they automate their end-users' payment flow along with SIM management through the 1oT Terminal.

The question stands:

How can I use 1oT Terminal’s API to automate the processes around the end-users payments through Stripe, Braintree, or some other payment gateway? How to get the Terminal’s API to automatically activate/deactivate the SIM card in the device depending on the payment status?

First, our customers typically have payment mechanisms in place to receive money for the connected device services they provide - credit card payments through Stripe or Braintree, or some local/other payment methods. Therefore, 1oT’s customers know when their customers have paid their bills and for what period they were billed for. They have an overview of which customers haven't renewed their service subscriptions.

Additionally, 1oT Terminal has an API that allows extensive SIM management. Through the API, our customers can automate their processes without ever needing to log into the Terminal itself.

Let's walk through these functionalities with an actual use case.

A company called E-Bikes Ltd produces electric bikes with a monthly subscription fee of 9€ for their users. The bikes can be purchased and the services subscribed to on E-Bikes' self-service platform.

As E-Bikes handles its customers' payments via Stripe, they have an overview of which users have paid for their their devices, and which have not, either through churn or merely forgetting to extend their subscription.

Moreover, all E-Bikes devices are identifiable by IMEI or ICCID numbers available for the company.

As E-Bikes is using 1oT Terminal's API to automatically process their customers' payments to manage SIMs, they're using the following flow:

• E-Bikes receives a payment through their self-service platform. That way they know that the device identified by ICCID X or IMEI Y has been paid for for the next billing period;
• Once E-Bikes gets the payment confirmation, they send in an API request to 1oT Terminal API to activate the respective SIM card. The activation request only needs an ICCID number to identify the SIM card;

• Whenever E-Bikes’ customer renews their service, no additional SIM-card management is required because the SIM is already in "LIVE" status;

• If a user does not renew the service, E-Bikes can send in an API request to suspend the SIM-card that’s located in this client’s device, and that SIM will no longer be able to connect to the network. Since E-Bikes hasn’t collected the payment from their customer, the SIM is automatically set to OFFLINE status, and the costs (for E-Bikes) for that SIM-card are decreased.

There are also ways to set up a more advanced tracking by leveraging 1oT Terminal's extensive workflow automation logic. 

With workflow automation, E-Bikes could set up alerts and automated actions that are dependent on specific triggers. For example, if E-Bikes' user should take an advantage of a SIM card and/or manipulate the Terms of Services mandated by the company, the latter could set up push notifications to their own API.

These measures would ensure that should the end-user do any funny business; consume too much data, or take the device outside of the deployment country, E-Bikes would immediately receive a notification.

Alternatively, they have an option to automate an action for a particular case (i.e automatically setting the SIM to OFFLINE status).

To find out more about how 1oT offers more than just a simple IoT SIM card or how to automate your day-to-day connectivity operations on 1oT Terminal, get in touch with our Sales Team at sales@1ot.com.