Are paypal recurring payments Prepaid or Postpaid? - paypal

I've been reading through all of the recurring payments documents and I can't find whether it is prepaid or postpaid.
https://www.paypalobjects.com/webstatic/en_US/developer/docs/pdf/pp_payflowpro_recurringbilling_guide.pdf
Is it just charged on the START of payment period? There is no post-paid options?

The first payment will be made on the start date of the profile unless you include an initial amount. So you could create a profile today, but set the start date to 1 month from now, for example. That would create an "active" profile, but the first payment wouldn't be made until 30 days later (or whatever day you set as the start date of the profile.)

Related

Double Payment in PayPal Subscriptions

I have a problem with PayPal recurring payment because my recurring payment is set in MONTHLY but after registration, I encounter double payment. The date of my registration is July 27, 2020, but instead of the next payment will be due next month PayPal. They charge me on the next day of my registration.
Please see the below image for the email from PayPal of my transaction today.
If you set an "Every 1 month" cycle PayPal Subscription to bill immediately, the first payment will bill on the following day.
If you have a setup_fee, it will bill immediately at checkout time.
If both are happening, then you need to get rid of either the setup_fee, or the first cycle of billing.
The way you get rid of the first cycle of billing is to begin with a trial sequence of 1 month that is 1 cycle long (and has no charge)
Then, after the 1 month trial, the regular periods of billing every 1 month can begin.

Paypal recurring payments not getting charged

I am using the PayPal REST API in the sandbox. I have set a recurring payment from my customer account to my business account yesterday. Everything was successful, the setup fee was charged. The next payment is due today, at 8 am. 3 Hours have now passed and the payment did not go through.
Even if I request the agreement details now, I have "next_billing_date": "2018-11-06T08:00:00Z", (my timezone is GMT, this is not a timezone issue), with "cycles_completed": "0".
I was unable to find mention anywhere of any possible delay. Is there an issue with my setup, or is the time bit of the date just for the sake of being ISO 8601 and the charges happen sometime on the specified day ?
The payment will actually get charged within 24 hours. Had 3 payments with "next_billing_date": "2018-11-06T10:00:00Z" and all came in in a random order at random times throughout the day.

Change paypal next payment date in existing and executed billing agreement?

I used PayPal SDK to create and execute a billing agreement that was supposed to charge the client every 3 months.
However, I used the setup_fee to charge the customer immediately and set the start date to be 1 month in the future instead of 3.
I can see on the customer's profile that the customer next payment due date is in one month and I am not capable of changing the next payment date.
I've already tried using the billing agreement update method, but it doesn't let me change the start_date or next_payment_date.
Any idea how I can change the next payment date for the existing billing agreement that have already been executed?
The answer is not great, but the somewhat solution I found was to suspend the plans.
To give more context, my problem was the following:
User subscribed to quarterly paid plan on September 15th and paid setup_fee
Next payment was incorrectly configured to be on October 15th - because I added a month to the start date*
The actual next payment date should be 3 months after, on December 15h
My "solution":
I paused the subscriptions for those users before October 15th, more specifically on October 10th.
I restarted the solution 2 days after the incorrect next_payment_date, on October 17th.
Once the plan was restarted the next_payment_date was set to 3 months later, so it was set to January 15th.
So as you can observe, I was not able to actually fix it, but rather I accepted to "lose" a month.
Note: Paypal support was LESS than useful. At first their recommendation was to cancel the plan and ask the users to buy again. Then I sugggested the approach of suspending and they INCORRECTLY confirmed to me that the next payment date would be the correct one, and that was not true, it was ONE month later. So be aware of what their support says.

How do you create a subscription in paypal that renews on specific yearly dates

I have a business case where i need to bill the user for a subscription on a yearly basis but starting at a specific date: 1 of april of current or previous year.
Examples:
User registers on March 31st, 2015, gets charged 10$, gets charged 10$ again on the 1st of april 2015 and on each subsequent 1st of april
User registers on 1st of may 2015, gets charged 10$, gets billed again on 1st of april 2016 and each 1st of april after that
Can this be done with paypal recurring payments profiles? I don't see anything regarding this in the doc although i do see that i cannot start a recurring profile in the past:
The profile start date may not be earlier than the profile creation date.
https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/paypal-payments-pro/integration-guide/WPRecurringPayments/
Can this be done?
Use the INITAMT field to indicate an immediate charge in addition to the profile charges.
Your values will look something like this, using NVP with CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile
'BILLINGPERIOD'=>'YEAR', // bill on a yearly basis
'BILLINGFREQUENCY'=>1, // bill once ever year
'TOTALBILLINGCYCLES'=>0, // how many periods (in this case, years) 0 = no end
'INITAMT'=>10, // charge this amount right now
'AMT'=>10, // amount to be billed each time
'FAILEDINITAMTACTION'=>'CancelOnFailure', // if the init amount fails, do not create a profile
'PROFILESTARTDATE'=>'2015-04-01T00:00:00Z' // April 1, 2015 -- adjust as needed
... you also need the standard fields like the first name, last name, and card details.
Charging an initial amount has a big advantage -- you get to verify the card right away. Without an initial amount, paypal will establish the recurring payment profile without actually touching the card, as long as all the information is there. It does not make sure the information is right. So, you could be setting up a profile for a card that doesn't actually work. You won't find out about the failure until the first profile billing, and then, you don't get any information about why it failed, just the fact that it did. With INITAMT, you get the detailed feedback you get for a normal one-time charge, eg. the card was declined, the CVV was wrong, etc.
Be sure to carefully explain the bill dates to your user. If this is happening on 3/29/2015, you might not want to do the first billing on 4/1/2015, but wait a month. This really depends on your use-case.
Documentation
CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile - https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/api/merchant/CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile_API_Operation_NVP/

Paypal subscription auto payments on a specific day?

I am offering an annual program and want to automatically withdraw payments from my clients via PayPal. I see how to create a subscription to do this.
However, it charges them one month after they pay the first installment. I really want to bill all of my clients on the 1st of the month for 12 months, to simply the accounting for myself and them.
Is there a way to create an automatic payment on the 1st of every month without asking all of my clients to pay on that specific day?
I called Paypal and they said it would require html coding, but couldn't tell me HOW that might be accomplished for someone like me who doesn't write code.
If you're using the Recurring Payments API you can specify the PROFILESTARTDATE and set it to whatever future date you want. The profile will be become active immediatly, but it won't start until that date, which is when the first payment would be made.
Just keep in mind if somebody signs up on the 2nd of the month you'll basically be giving them a free month.