Recurring Payments in PayPal

Question

Hi All,

I am trying to use the Recurring payment API offered by PayPal. I have a scenario which I am not able to address directly. It goes like this.

We have a website where we sell some services. Now the services are charged per user license. A user can buy/cancel user license in between. We want to offer the customer a recurring billing option. We have to notice here that the amount may vary each billing cycle based on the number of user licenses the customer uses during that cycle.

Is there any way I can achieve this using PayPal recurring Payment API's.

Thanks, Ramjee Ganti.

Answer 1

The recurring payment option is a fixed amount that the customer pre-agrees to pay each month (or period). To do what you're trying to do, a customer would have to pre-agree to pay whatever amount you decide to charge at a later time. This means pre-authorizing an unknown payment amount, which will not be allowed by any payment service.

Your only options are:

1. Bill the variable amount each month (i.e. no subscription).
2. Set up a subscription where the monthly amount is the maximum that could potentially be billed, and then refund the difference each month.

Good luck with #2 - I would never agree to such a thing as a customer, personally.

Answer 2

What you're looking for is covered in the UK by the Direct Debit system, however given the potential for abuse it's very tightly controlled and there are a lot of restrictions and regulations governing it.

I'd strongly suggest you just set up a monthly invoicing system that just bills the client each month.

Answer 3

I realize this is a very old post, but it still shows up for Google searches, so I thought I'd add:

Paypal does allow you to do this now, using their new adaptive payments api.

Authorize.net also has a service that might work called Customer Information Manager.