Membership renewal methods

I really cannot see what is hard with paying by internet banking transfer.The main thing is to get people to use a sensible payment reference like membership number and surname, to give the memb sec a chance of seeing who's paid. Dropping them an email at the same time helps too.
Our subs are not so high that monthly payment is needed, but I think the yacht owners who have moorings can pay that way. That possibly gives the club a balance of yearly and monthly income.
Bear in mind that some free bank accounts for businesses only allow x amount of transactions before charges kick in.

When new members are joining it seems only fair to offer them pro rata rate depending on when they join during the year. Even better than a straight line pro rata rate is to band the pricing so that joining towards the end of the membership period when the main sailing season is over and there is less activity is at a lower rate and encourages new members to join straight away rather than waiting for the start of the new season.

Royal Hariwch YC have begun to roll out Direct Debit payment this year, as well as reorganising the membership fees to a gradual structure of  18-24, 25-30, 31-35 rather than cheap price for those 18-24 then a massive hike at 25.

Surely with online banking, a BACS payment (not standing order or direct debit) is one of the simplest ways and once set up, unless the club changes bank accounts, it remains on the member's payments list ready for next year, only needing the amount when the next payment is made. I pay our club subs and other event payments using the one payment I have set up.
Also at our club anyone joining after a certain point (say 1st September) pays a full year membership plus joining fee but this lasts to the end of the following year.

I'm all for making things easier - however, the last time I looked (which was a long time ago) Direct Debit isn't always that easy to setup for voluntary organisations with relatively low turnovers and many banks have minimum (fairly steep) requirements. Instead, Standing Orders are easy for clubs to use, but this relies on individual members to remember to renew the Standing Order each year and is quite a lot of additional work for the Treasurer to ensure the correct fees have been paid by the end of the year.