For the taxation purposes, the subscription should charge the customer at the last business day of every month. Is there a way to do that instead of charging the customer every month/week?
In the docs https://developer.paypal.com/docs/subscriptions/integrate/ I have not found any way to implement that.
Subscriptions bill on calendar days, and have no knowledge of business days.
Other non-Subscription PayPal integrations, such as using reference transactions or vault, are capable of billing arbitrary amounts at arbitrary times when you do an API operation with the token. (They require the reference transaction feature which is not enabled on live accounts by default, the account owner must contact PayPal's business support --not technical support-- to request it and only then can PayPal guide you on which API to integrate)
Related
I'm currently building a Flutter application with an unusual subscription model. The idea is that depending on how the user uses the app, they would seamlessly be charged a different amount of money each month. I plan to use PayPal, and I've looked into their REST API, this is what I found: https://developer.paypal.com/docs/api/payments.billing-agreements/v1/#definition-agreement_details
In this API endpoint, I'm assuming I can setup a Billing Agreement for each user of a specific amount_range, where once the user agrees to the payment, I'd be allowed to seamlessly charge each user a varying amount, within that range.
Am I correct in my conclusion?
Would this be the best approach?
if not, can you point me in the right direction for how to achieve what I'm trying to do?
I do not want to use the deprecated API. it's very important to be using REST API.
Thank you very much.
The Billing Agreement API you link to is deprecated.
Using the current PayPal Subscriptions, if you create a unique Plan for each subscriber, you can update that Plan > 10 days before their next billing date, and they will receive an email notification of the new amount.
You can use webhooks to keep track of active subscriptions and the last time you've been successfully paid for one.
If you need an internal ID for reconciliation, set the parameter custom_id when you first create the subscription; its value will be returned in webhook events for that subscription.
We are planning to integrate to PayPal with following requirements:
We collect card based payments for US customers.
We are planning to integrate with Payflow Gateway with "Sage" as our processor.
We will have customers who will allow us to charge them on a periodic
basis (replenishment with Card on file).
Questions:
Is Payflow Gateway suitable for our requirements?
Does Payflow Gateway has a REST based interface? How do we tokenize (card on file) without keeping card numbers with us?
If "reference transaction" is the only way to do Card on file operation, how do we overcome the expiry period (1 year) of referenced transaction?
Payflow will do this through the reference transaction feature. For a reference transaction, you will be storing the transaction ID in your database, and the next time you want to charge the customer you will use the same transaction ID instead of passing the card details again.
Usually any transaction ID at Payflow is valid for one year, as per the docs. So in order to overcome that one year restriction, you are supposed to update your database every time with the latest transaction ID.
For example, a customer placed an order today, and you store the Payflow transaction ID in the database. Now suppose you need to charge the customer again after 7 months, then you will get a new transaction ID. This time, update your database with the new transaction ID for the same customer, and this way it will be valid again for another year.
You can do reference transactions (using the returned PNREF) but, like you said, they expire in 1 year. The only workaround for this I've found is to issue a zero-dollar authorization (ZDA) to get a new PNREF but there is some confusion about this with some reports saying that the new PNREF created by the ZDA will only work for 14 days.
The online version of the Payflow Pro Guide now states that the PNREF is good for reference transactions for "12 months and possibly up to 15 months". Unfortunately, that is pretty ambiguous wording that doesn't clear up very much.
I am writing a subscription where I need to provide users a month trial and charge $5.00 after trial is finished. I just found an amazing code to do that for me.
I also have setup paypalpro plus recurring payments
This is the link
https://github.com/krio/paypal-recurring-subscriptions
Questions:
1- How to make first month Free Trial?
2- I need to update users billing and update their payment in my database so it can calculate their subscription, how would i get to call from paypal to my files to update?
If you are using subscriptions and you are wanting to make the first month a free trial, you would need to pass over the following variables and values.
a1=0
p1=1
t1=M
You can find a description of all of the variables for subscriptions here.
If you are wanting to get updates back to your system/database to update your profiles and etc, you can use IPN to do this. Instant Payment Notification (IPN) is a message service that notifies you of events related to PayPal transactions. You can use it to automate back-office and administrative functions, such as fulfilling orders, tracking customers, and providing status and other information related to a transaction.
We are using PayPal subscriptions to automatically make ongoing monthly donations. The user initially creates a subscription with some pre-determined monthly donation amount (e.g., say $50/month). This creates a recurring subscription which we process by way of IPN. All good there. But, our interface allows the user to come in and change their monthly donation amount, say from $50/month to $100/month. I am wondering how I can change the PayPal subscription to reflect this new amount?
There is a method in PayPal's NVP API called "UpdateRecurringPaymentsProfile" which says I can update the subscription amount, but unfortunately it says:
For recurring payments with Express Checkout, the payment amount can be increased by no more than 20% every 180 days (starting when the profile is created).
(reference: https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=developer/e_howto_api_nvp_r_UpdateRecurringPaymentsProfile)
To be honest, PayPal's API's are quite confusing so I'm not sure if I am using the Express Checkout or not. (We are creating Subscription buttons using the simple Website Payment Standard API).
Will this work? If not, is there an alternative to achieve what we need?
Thanks!
I'm not sure if I am using the Express Checkout or not. (We are creating Subscription buttons using the simple Website Payment Standard API).
I hope rereading the above, you will realize that you answered your own question: You are using Website Payments Standard (WPS) not Express Checkout (EC).
With WPS, you can create a subscription modify button but this is super inflexible and I would not recommend it.
With EC, you can modify subscriptions as well (page 99):
Use the UpdateRecurringPaymentsProfile API to modify a recurring payments profile.
NOTE: You can also modify recurring payments profiles from the PayPal website.
You can only modify the following specific information about an active or suspended profile:
Subscriber name or address
Past due or outstanding amount
Whether to bill the outstanding amount with the next billing cycle
Maximum number of failed payments allowed
Profile description and reference
Number of additional billing cycles
Billing amount, tax amount, or shipping amount
NOTE: You cannot modify the billing frequency or billing period of a profile. You can
modify the number of billing cycles in the profile.
NOTE: For recurring payments with Express Checkout, certain updates, such as billing
amount, are not allowed within 3 days of the scheduled billing date, and an error is
returned.
You can modify the following profile information during the trial period or regular payment
period:
Billing amount (excluding tax and shipping)
Number of billing cycles
With that information out of the way... For the most flexibility:
Look at creating Billing Agreement IDs through Express Checkout. You will need to get Reference Transactions enabled on your PayPal account (talk to merchant support to get this done).
With a BAID, you control when your customers are charged, how much they are charged, and pretty much anything else having to do with the transaction. The drawback is the same as the benefit.. you (see 'have to') control it all.
I am trying to use the Recurring payment API offered by PayPal.
I have a scenario which I am not able to address directly. It goes like this.
We have a website where we sell some services. Now the services are charged per user license. A user can buy/cancel user license in between. We want to offer the customer a recurring billing option. We have to notice here that the amount may vary each billing cycle based on the number of user licenses the customer uses during that cycle.
Is there any way I can achieve this using PayPal recurring Payment API's.
I realize this is a very old post, but it still shows up for Google searches, so I thought I'd add:
Paypal does allow you to do this now, using their new adaptive payments api.
Authorize.net also has a service that might work called Customer Information Manager.
The recurring payment option is a fixed amount that the customer pre-agrees to pay each month (or period). To do what you're trying to do, a customer would have to pre-agree to pay whatever amount you decide to charge at a later time. This means pre-authorizing an unknown payment amount, which will not be allowed by any payment service.
Your only options are:
Bill the variable amount each month (i.e. no subscription).
Set up a subscription where the monthly amount is the maximum that could potentially be billed, and then refund the difference each month.
Good luck with #2 - I would never agree to such a thing as a customer, personally.
What you're looking for is covered in the UK by the Direct Debit system, however given the potential for abuse it's very tightly controlled and there are a lot of restrictions and regulations governing it.
I'd strongly suggest you just set up a monthly invoicing system that just bills the client each month.
I don't know its meaning full or not as it is a very old post.
Instead of creating recurring profile on PayPal Server, You can store the customer's credit card on the PayPal using REST API: https://developer.paypal.com/docs/api/#vault then every month you can fetch it and charge it like recurring Payment Or When client is no longer with the services then just remove its card from PayPal.
I suppose Authorize.net SIM method also does the same.
Hope this make sense.