I am using Stripe to test how my code would react to recurring subscription renewal payment attempts for a product we are working on (need to test success, failure ...etc.). And it seems that most answers on StackOverflow suggest creating a subscription with a recurring payment of 1 day (which is the minimum recurring payment available at Stripe), and waiting until next day to see how my code would react to the webhook notifications. (By the way, I could not find much documentation on Stripe to suggest testing methodologies for recurring payment).
I do not agree much with this approach, because it stretches the testing of my code to more than a week, maybe even two, but in normal conditions I might finish that testing within a couple of hours.
I think one of the following two approaches would be sufficient to do my coding/testing.
Find a way to make recurring subscription interval happen on shorter custom periods, such as every 15 minutes, or every 10 minutes.
A better solution is to make recurring subscriptions trigger on demand. That is, I create a subscription, and then I would update the date for the next renewal manually to a custom value, such as "1 minute in the future" or "30 seconds in the future" which would trigger the payment attempt.
Is there a way of doing any of those two options in Stripe? If neither is a viable option, how do I test recurring payments efficiently.
Thanks.
Our solution was to reset the billing cycle of the subscription.
open the subscription in Stripe
click "Actions" in the upper right
select "Update Subscription"
be sure to switch off "Prorate changes"
scroll down and open "Advanced Options"
check "Reset billing cycle"
and finally... Update Subscription
This will trigger a new subscription payment and all the associated webhooks.
Simple method
Definitely #Marc found the great option for arbitrarily subscription renewal. The same action he described in this answer can be done programmatically or with the Stripe CLI:
stripe subscriptions update sub_id \
--proration-behavior=none \
--billing-cycle-anchor=now
This command generates the following sequence of events:
charge.succeeded
invoice.finalized
invoice.created
invoice.paid
invoice.payment_succeeded
customer.subscription.updated
payment_intent.succeeded
payment_intent.created
Advanced method
The use of test clock gives more opportunities to verify your system's behavior. It is possible to attach test clock not only to the Subscription object.
So I would start with their testing documentation It walks you through the process.
it seems that you can trigger events on the fly with CLI commands.
Also look at the Webhook Monitor
Related
Requirement:
We want to have a base subscription which is X/month, done via recurring payments, and give clients the ability to choose extra "add-ons" as they please. An "add-on" will be Y/Month and should last the remainder of the base subscription. For example, the base subscription is 10/month and feature X is extra 5/month and feature Y is an extra 7/month. I choose to have the base subscription with feature X and Y so my total monthly payment for a year will be 22/month. Now, if I chose only the base subscription for the first 6 months and want to start using feature X for the final 6 months of my subscription, the final 6 months should be 15/month opposed to the previous 10/month. In further terms, add-on features subscription should last the duration of the base subscription.
Is there a simple way to do this via the PayPal API?
Actual recurring payments profiles (setup with Standard or Express Checkout) have a limit on how much you can raise the amount of a profile. You can only raise it by 20% every 180 days. If you create a recurring payments profile with Payments Pro, though, then there is no such limit and you can change the amount at any time to whatever you need. I wouldn't recommend going without EC, though, as lots of people prefer to pay with PayPal.
What you could do, though, instead of using the recurring payments APIs would be to use billing agreements / reference transactions. This way you'd save the billing agreement / auth ID in your database and then you can use the DoReferenceTransaction API to process any variable amount you need to at any time.
So in that case you would basically be building your own recurring payments system where you'll save the "next payment date" in your database, and then you'll have an automated script run each day to process all of the payments that are due that day via a reference transaction.
Reference transactions work with Payments Pro, too, so if you're using that everything would still work the same.
Since you're working with PHP I'd recommend taking a look at my class library for PayPal. It will make all of these API calls very simple for you.
So I am dealing with Authorize.net's ARB, and I have a situation where the user is applying for usage of our service for eg. 3 months. We charge the user for this period - 3 months, but we don't make a subscription immediately. The thing is, we don't want to automatically charge them again once the membership expires after 3 months, but only if they go to account settings and set that option (extend membership automatically). So if they don't select it, there is no need to establish a subscription, so that's why we aren't doing it in starting point, once the user applies for this service.
So the question is, should I create a new subscription once user selects "Yes" for that option, and delete the subscription when he selects "No" ?
Is there another way to do it?
It's really hard to find some answers by Google, and I was hoping someone with more experience will have an answer here.
Thanks in advance.
When the user selects "Yes" for the new subscription just create a new ARB subscription with a start date of three months past their three month trial period. The three month subscription will run its normal course and terminate after three months. Then the new subscription will start at that point.
But here's the catch with that solution: you need the customer's credit card information in order to recreate another subscription. Unless you store it somewhere (bad idea) you can do that. So you would need to ask for it again. That's a large hurdle to overcome and will negatively affect conversion rates.
Alternatively you can automatically create the three month subscription at the point where the user starts their three month trial. As they approach the end of the three month trial you should make them aware there subscription will automatically start unless they cancel it. This solves the creation of the subscription problem but isn't very popular with users as nobody likes being automatically enrolled in a subscription.
Third option is to use Authorize.Net's CIM API to create a payment account for that user. Then you can charge against their card whenever you want. The problem with that is CIM does not support subscriptions. So you'd have to write your own subscription engine to make this work.
So there is no ideal solution for this. You just need to pick the one that you think works best for you.
I have setup a PHP script on a cron which contacts Braintree via the API to look up the status of each subscription that we have on file. We then update our local records based on the customer's subscription status. Because I can manually cancel a subscription from the Braintree control panel, I have been able to test that my script can detect canceled subscriptions.
However, I can't find any way to test a past-due status other than to wait for the billing cycle to go 'round. Because the minimum length of a billing cycle in Braintree is one month, this makes debugging my script very difficult.
I know that in theory I should just see a different string for the status of the subscription, but I'm looking for a reproducible way to simulate past-due status, along with a positive balance and value for daysPastDue.
Can anyone help?
$BT_subscription = Braintree_Subscription::find($BT_subscription_id);
if ($BT_subscription && $BT_subscription instanceof Braintree_Subscription) {
if ($BT_subscription->status == 'Past Due' && $BT_subscription->balance > 0) {
// ...
I got the following reply from Braintree support about this issue:
Because our sandbox environment is meant to replicate our production environment there is no way to force a subscription to past due. However here is a little work around that might make this testing easier:
To put a subscription in the Past Due status in the Sandbox, you can create a subscription with a trial period of one day and a price of $2000. Then, when the one day trial expires, it will trigger a transaction create that will fail because of the dollar amount.
The $2000 price tag is likely for the Test Amounts for Unsuccessful Transactions to trigger the credit card payment to fail. I have setup a test, and will edit this if the test proves unsuccessful.
Adding on to Tyler V's response, and this is still the only way to test it, unfortunately.
From support:
Thanks for reaching out, and appreciate your patience. Using a sandbox
account, the shortest amount of time you can simulate a result will be
1 day. Use the following example to create a Past Due status:
Create a plan with a 1 day trial and $2000 price Create a customer
with a credit card Create a new subscription using the plan and
customer The first charge attempt will be after 1 day (when the trial
expires) and will fail The automatic retries will be at +10 and +20
days of the subscription going past due Please see the following page
for Sandbox test values. I would recommend that the you create a LOT
of these at one time so you have multiples to work with; otherwise
you’ll have to wait a day for each new one they create to move into
past due.
#Tyler V.
When creating a new subscription, you can set first_billing_date to one day ahead
You should enable Webhook, store the message, and replay it by using postman.
My company is providing service, which has few subscription plans with different monthly fee. Everything is working via PayPal recurring payments.
I want to implement upgrade system, so clients could switch to more expensive plan.
For now I found two solutions:
Modify current subscription and ask for payment to cover difference in plans to the end of the month (modified subscription will work only from the next month). So basically I need to give my client two different forms to submit to PayPal, which is very bad.
Also I could cancel current recurring payment and ask client to subscribe for new. Cancel is possible in the background without any user interaction, he only need to submit new form for new payment.
I like second method more, but it still not very clear for users and I'm looking for better solution.
Sounds like option 2 would be the only viable one.
For upgrading have your script put them on a new subscription, then on your script that processes the PayPal reply, have it check to see if the user already has a subscription, if they do, then create a paypal request to cancel the old subscription.
Although this is a very old question, I found it while trying to implement this kind of upgrade and I believe might be interesting for other people.
Now, you can upgrade paypal subscription amount programatically. More info here:
https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/express-checkout/ht_ec-recurringPaymentProfile-curl-etc/
https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/api/merchant/UpdateRecurringPaymentsProfile_API_Operation_NVP/
However, this has the limitation that you cannot upgrade more than 20% of the current amount for half a year. In my case, and probably many others, the best option is to cancel the current subscription once the new subscription has been approved.
If you need to start charging the subscription next month, it can be easily achieved with the starting date parameters or giving a free trial.
I am working on an application that provides a 30 day trial, then the option to have a monthly or yearly subscription (at two different prices).
I've used a lot of the info provided by John Conde on his site (thanks John), but want to be sure I've got the right idea about how all this works - my first time doing anything with Authorize.net or subscriptions...
So if I have a 30 day trial, and someone decides they want to pay today, they should not be billed for 60 days. I set the start date ahead 60 days, but should I see any kind of charge in Authorize.net showing it's pending?
Next, is part of the ARB service that it "watches" for the renewal, or am I supposed to do something to trigger the check on a regular basis. I'm pretty sure that's what ARB is, and I don't need cron to check each day, but I'd rather ask a dumb question now rather than have a bunch of missing charges later.
Finally, what information would you recommend I store in my local DB and what should I let the ARB service capture. Currently, I'm storing what the subscription item is, who the person who is making payment is (by id), the name on the card, the last four digits of the card in case they want to reference what was used, the expiration date of the card, so I can look for pending expirations (unless this is part of ARB as well) and the date the subscription starts, ends.
Any additional info is appreciated.
So if I have a 30 day trial, and
someone decides they want to pay
today, they should not be billed for
60 days. I set the start date ahead 60
days, but should I see any kind of
charge in Authorize.net showing it's
pending?
Use the AIM API to charge their initial payment and then set the start date in ARB to be in 60 days (when their first payment is). You won't get any notice that the subscription is "pending" but if a subscription ID is returned to you by the ARB API then it's safe to assume that first payment will be attempted in 60 days.
Next, is part of the ARB service that
it "watches" for the renewal, or am I
supposed to do something to trigger
the check on a regular basis. I'm
pretty sure that's what ARB is, and I
don't need cron to check each day, but
I'd rather ask a dumb question now
rather than have a bunch of missing
charges later.
You don't have to do anything. The "A" in ARB stands for Automated and it is completely automated. Once a payment is scheduled it will run automatically until the subscription ends, you cancel the subscription, or their card expires and you don't update it before the next scheduled bill date.
Finally, what information would you
recommend I store in my local DB and
what should I let the ARB service
capture. Currently, I'm storing what
the subscription item is, who the
person who is making payment is (by
id), the name on the card, the last
four digits of the card in case they
want to reference what was used, the
expiration date of the card, so I can
look for pending expirations (unless
this is part of ARB as well) and the
date the subscription starts, ends.
Send as much information to the ARB API as you can. It makes researching transactions in the Authnet control panel much easier as you can compare what you have captured to what they show in their transaction history.
It sounds like you're storing information that will be useful to you. I'd encrypt anything credit card related as to make it less useful if your DB gets hacked. You store enough information that a hacker could use it to convince your customers that they have their credit card number and then things get really ugly.
Well, in general you should avoid storing CC info (for security reason), so keeping everything at ARB would be better.
You should schedule the payments right when the user registers and set the startDate in the SOAP-call to 60 days later. Store the transaction key or however they call, so you can cancel the subscription at ARB anytime. If you do it that way, you can avoid handling payments at all and you just need to handle subscription and unsubscription.