I want to build a website where the buyer subscribes to my product, that's not monthy but quarterly. I have two questions:
Is it possible to set up a quarterly payment, so that the user subscribes but gets charged every three months?
Is it possible to set up a 'pay per thing' payment, so that the user accepts the subscription but is only charged when I, the seller, push a button or similar.
For the latter one, an example: Let's say I publish every three months. I published, I click "charge!" and it charges my subscribers. Three months go by and I can't publish yet, so I won't click "charge!" until next month.
Are those questions answerable? Are them possible?
Thanks.
you can use Paypal's Enhanced Recurring Payments with Automatic Billing to achieve this.
For your first scenario you would just use the subscription service
For your second scenario you would use automatic billing.
Keep in mind there are legal requirements for both that will vary based on your locality. For example, in the US a subscription is a form of contract and you could not offer "Subscriptions" to a product that might not be regularly delivered (unless you built int a grace period into your subscription contract, in which case, you would be allowed to charge the person even if the delivery was late)
Related
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.
I've read a few responses here regarding the modification of the recurring fee amount but still confused.
We have 5 subscriptions levels per month:
£10
£15
£20
£30
£50
We want to be able to let customers change their subscription package to any of the other options.
It sounds like if they are changing to a package with more than 20% difference from the one they are on - we would have to make them cancel and start a new subscription.
Surely there is a way to have the subscriber confirm they are happy to change the amount?
thanks
User can modify your paypal amount, but some restriction are there.
In Standard account, you can use "modify" html variable to change subscription amount as below.
0 – allows subscribers only to sign up for new subscriptions
1 – allows subscribers to sign up for new subscriptions and modify their current subscriptions
2 – allows subscribers to modify only their current subscriptions
The default value is 0.
Following link will hel you more,
https://cms.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=developer/e_howto_html_subscribe_buttons#id08ADF500NXK
you can not modify often your amount, you can only increase the subscription amount by 20% for 180 days.
but if you move to paypal payflow($30/month), paypal itself provide API to communicate with paypal service. its very flexible to modify, cancel subscription.
paypal standard - user cannot cancel subscription their self if they dont have paypal login.
paypal payflow - user can able to cancel their subscription.
I'm working on a site that does non-recurring subscriptions, currently testing it on Paypal Sandbox. Let's say duration is 1 week (t3 = W, p3 = 1). I didn't include src and srt variables in the form. From what little information I have read related to this, a non-recurring subscription counts as a one-off and immediately expires the subscription. I want it to still lapse the duration and subscr_eot be called one week later. The application is run on Java/JSP.
This sounds like it needs to be handled on your side, not on PayPal's.
You receive a payment for your services, and attach an expiration date to that user in your database. He's only allowed to log into your site before his account expires.
So, I now devided the fee into two parts: eg, the one year fee is $10, than I charge $9.95 as the one year trial amount a1, and $0.05 as a non-recurring daily fee (a3) for only one day.
Seems that does it... at least the EOT is not immediately send...
Just have to explain your customers that this awkward payment plan is because of a Paypal peculiarity...
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.