Recurring payment are necessary to sell subscriptions, memberships or services that requires regular transactions processing.
Our recurring payment system have great flexibility in terms of setup. However once it is setup all the payments use the same settings. We call it Subscription Offer. You can create one or many subscription offers for different recurring payment amounts or the frequency of payments.
Setting Up a Subscription Offer
- Go to Settings > Subscription Offers
- Click in the Plus icon
- You will be presented with a form as follow
The fields are:
- Name: a descriptive name for the subscription offer.
- Description: any text that you like to add to complement the information.
- Type: Means types of offers
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Subscription type Description Operations allowed Normal Customer will subscribe for using service for an optional trial period (with amount) Each period he will have a recurring billing (amount define by “amount” parameter) until reaching the number of iteration.
Cancel / Modification of parameters / Restart Lifetime Customer will subscribe for using service without time limit (for an amount) Cancel One-time Customer will subscribe for using service for an period (with amount). He will be allowed to use it only for this period.
Cancel Infinite Customer will subscribe for using service for an optional trial period (with initial amount). Each period he will have a recurring billing (amount define by “amount” parameter) without any limit.
Cancel / Modification of parameters / Restart - Originator: Represents the website/payment page you will to add this payment option. On the payment page it will show some extra information
- Currency: the currency to process the payment.
- Number of iterations: this can be a specified number of payments, such as 12 month membership, or according of the type chosen above could be with no time limits.
- Frequency: such as weekly, monthly or bi-weekly payments
- Amount: the amount to charge the cardholder.
Tip: if you need a technical implementation, an API is also available
Note: Once the offer is created, there is a validation process by your Account Manager to activate the subscription offer.
Trial Period
Only subscriptions type Normal and Infinite have trial periods enabled. Simply check the box Trial Period, enter amount and duration of trial.
Real scenarios examples
Readers Club Subscription website
A website x offers a monthly subscription to new members for $49. They would like a seven days trial period for free. If the customer don´t cancel the subscription, the system will process the recurring payments and he will become a full member.
The settings:
- Type: Infinite
- Frequency: 1 month
- Amount: $49
- Trial Period: $49
- Trial Duration: 7 days.
Case explained: The membership will have no end. The end will be marked by the end user when he cancels his subscription. The first payment of $49 will be at the end of the 7 days period, then every 1 month thereafter. The payments will be process on the anniversary date, no at the beginning of the month.
We advice to avoid charging the user a big payment, as if the customer change his mind and request a chargeback for 6 month payment will have a bigger impact on your business than a request for 1 month.