Is it possible to increase the number of retries on failed payments for PayPal subscriptions? I can't find any global account-level setting for it.
There's a sra HTML button parameter, to reattempt failed recurring payments before canceling, and its documentation says that 'PayPal attempts to collect the payment two more times before canceling the subscription', but in-fact under an existing subscription's details it says: 'This profile will be suspended after 1 failure', which is contradictory.
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I have a bog-standrad Paypal subscription -button installation, with an IPN callback flow. One bleeding point of this setup for the past 24 months has been the instant subscription cancellation upon lack of available funds; which, statistically, happens with moderate frequency in the target market I'm currently selling to.
So, current IPN flow is: subscr_signup -> [Nx] subscr_payment -> subscr_cancel/subscr_failed [terminate subscription].
According to a previous SO question: retry to charge the client if a payment fails:
There is a variable sra when set to 1 , PaYPal will try to collect the payment two more times before canceling the subscription. More information on Recurring Payments Reattempts
I suspect using this would drastically reduce "churn-by-payment-issue" problem, and would like to implement this.
My question is, what is the IPN callback flow for these endgame situations? That is, for "payment failed, will retry", VS "payment failed, subscription terminated" , specifically, what order, and txn_type will be called?
Many thanks.
When using the Paypal Express Checkout API, I've created a recurring payments profile, and set up an endpoint to listen for IPN messages.
I've received messages at this endpoint with a txn_type of recurring_payment_skipped.
The documentation is a little sparse on the details of when these messages may occur:
Recurring payment skipped; it will be retried up to 3 times, 5 days apart
What would cause a recurring payment to be skipped? What happens after the 3rd retry?
Skipped basically means failed. This could be due to the funding source(s) available (or not available) on the payer's account, it could be something like a daily limit reached on the payer's credit card, or anything else that would keep the payment from completing.
After the 3rd retry if it hasn't completed successfully it will automatically suspend the profile. At that point you would have to collect the outstanding balance and then you could reactivate the profile.
I'm testing recurring payment on Sandbox of Paypal.
But I find out client's account is not enough money, but their own account is still recieved money.
If client 's account is not enough money, how does the paypal process?
This transaction will be suspend or cancel...
If client'account have enough money then the transaction become activate.
For initial payment, use FAILEDINITAMTACTION, Action you can specify when a payment fails. It is one of the following values:
ContinueOnFailure – By default, PayPal suspends the pending profile in the event that the initial payment amount fails. You can override this default behavior by setting this field to ContinueOnFailure. Then, if the initial payment amount fails, PayPal adds the failed payment amount to the outstanding balance for this recurring payment profile.
When you specify ContinueOnFailure, a success code is returned to you in the CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile response and the recurring payments profile is activated for scheduled billing immediately. You should check your IPN messages or PayPal account for updates of the payment status.
CancelOnFailure – If this field is not set or you set it to CancelOnFailure, PayPal creates the recurring payment profile, but places it into a pending status until the initial payment completes. If the initial payment clears, PayPal notifies you by IPN that the pending profile has been activated. If the payment fails, PayPal notifies you by IPN that the pending profile has been canceled.
Once you are into the regular billing cycle, Be sure to assign a value to MAXFAILEDPAYMENTS, which is the number of scheduled payments that can fail before the profile is automatically suspended. An IPN message is sent to the merchant when the specified number of failed payments is reached.
Then, AUTOBILLOUTAMT Indicates whether you would like PayPal to automatically bill the outstanding balance amount in the next billing cycle. The outstanding balance is the total amount of any previously failed scheduled payments that have yet to be successfully paid. It is one of the following values:
NoAutoBill – PayPal does not automatically bill the outstanding balance.
AddToNextBilling – PayPal automatically bills the outstanding balance.
it is up to you how to handle profiles that suspend.
I am working on the paypal recurring payment and I have set the MaxFailedPayments as 3. I want to send email to user when the this maximum failed payment has reahced 3. So from which status field in the IPN message ,we can understand MaxFailedPayments has reached ?
Thanks in advance
Boney
There is a "txn_type" value that tells you when a Recurring Profile reaches it maximum failed payment attempt limit - txn_type=recurring_payment_suspended_due_to_max_failed_payment
You can use that to trigger your notice to buyers.
You should receive an IPN post when the payment fails - txn_type=recurring_payment_failed
Trigger a notice to send out after two failed payment IPN posts arrive instead of waiting for the third failure and the Profile going into a suspended status.
When a subscription payment fails, PayPal will retry for n times.
What transaction type (subscr_cancel or subscr_eot) is sent back via IPN, after all retries fail?
The specifics depend on the PayPal product you're using, although the logic works similar(`ish) across both Website Payments Standard subscription buttons and Express Checkout Recurring Payments (via the CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile API):
This depends on whether you've set MAXFAILEDPAYMENTS or not. If MAXFAILEDPAYMENTS > 0 is set, it will cancel the subscription after n number of attempts and you'll receive a subscr_cancel. If you have it set to MAXFAILEDPAYMENTS=0, you'll get recurring_payment_skipped and the recurring payment will be marked as having an outstanding balance. If you specify AUTOBILLOUTAMT=AutoBillAmt, the outstanding balance will be added to the next billing cycle.
I would suggest taking a look at https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=developer/e_howto_html_IPNandPDTVariables#id091EB0901HT which lists all IPN variables, including the ones for recurring payments.
Paypal returns subscr_failed for this case, and the possible return values are:
subscr_signup: subscription sign-up.
subscr_cancel: subscription cancellation.
subscr_failed: subscription payment failure.
subscr_payment: subscription payment.
subscr_eot: subscription’s end-of-term.
subscr_modify: subscription modification.
Please click here for further clarification.