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.
Related
Hello and nice day to everyone!
We are currently building stripe integration (PHP), but are facing problems regarding the valid approach.
The case is, that our e-commerce has business model, where you are buying some physical good (usually one item per purchase) and the you pick type of support plan for that item (subscription with trial).
Practically, it shall go like:
you pay one-time purchase
you subscribe to support plan with certain trial (30 days)
after 30 days you got charged
So in the same time you pay for the product and sign for subscription with trial period.
It shall be 3D secure protected, so our customers wont be bothered with authentication when trial ends.
Sadly, we didnt figured it out yet :(
What kind of approach shall we use? Thanks for any answer and your time
I think you need to specify a trial period(one month) when you set up the plan in stripe, then the money will be deducted automatically at that time.
I am new to PHP. I am creating a system which shows customers, subscription package, and balance amount.
I have created user CRUD system and Packages CRUD System. What I want to have is to increase balance amount every 30 days, basically like recurring subscription. What I need is basic guideline.
This works like this -
Created a customer
Assigned him a Package
Balance amount increases every 30 days
(I'm Stuck on 3rd Point)
Well, the basic approach would be to:
Do NOT keep track of a "balance", but register the "end date" of the subscription. You can both keep track of the last month paid as the end date of the contract. Actually you can register more dates and make this as complicated as you want.
The "basic guideline" is that in the database you store dates and not balances. This allows you to only make changes as part of a transaction (like paying changing/adding a contract).
Hope this different approach helps you.
The situation is like this,
I have three kind of user registration on my site
$20/month
$30/month
$40/month
now, suppose a user registers with $30 amount and takes the 2nd registration...
next 2 months his $30 per month were deducted as per the recurring payment of paypal...working fine .:)
Now, he wants to upgrade to $40 i.e 3rd membership , so from next month his amount deduction should be $40... How to update paypal for this change in amount..
I DON'T WANT TO GO TO PAYPAL'S SITE FOR THIS...
Is there any API for this purpose.......
Any help would be appreciated....
First off, Paypal's API is not a simple or easy thing to use, but what you're asking can be done. It is simply a matter of canceling the existing 'recurring payment profile' via the API, and starting another recurring payment that ends at the same time.
The API methods themselves change depending on which system you are using. At my company, we use Paypal Website Payments Pro. This has a specific set of functions to perform actions. Without knowing which system you use, however, we can't give any further advice.
The below link shows a number of the methods for the different Paypal API's. Do your research, and try to ask specific questions. :)
https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=developer/howto_api_reference
Daniel Moniz
I was able to do this, but first, this caveat from PayPal should be noted:
Note: 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).
Since I'm not using Express Checkout, POSTing this worked for me to change an amount from $75 to $200 (the credentials are fake):
TRXTYPE=R&TENDER=C&PARTNER=PayPal&VENDOR=Acme&USER=Acme&PWD=a1b2c3d4
&ACTION=M&AMT=200.00&ORIGPROFILEID=RP0000001234
The other caveat is that this is only one of I-don't-know-how-many APIs and I-don't-know-how-many-types-of-accounts (in this case Payflow) that PayPal has, and I don't know if something similar works for all of them. The above code is actually copied almost verbatim (credentials and amount changed) from https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/payflow/recurring-billing/.
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.