Recurring Membership Payment

I use pay pal for recurring payments for myself and a traditional processor/gateway for my clients.  

You NEVER store credit card numbers or CVV (card security code) anywhere on your own.   It is up to the processor/gateway to do this.

The caveat with paypal  is if a payment is skipped, they try 5 days later.  Then the new recurring date is that new date the charge went through.

If you use a traditional processor/gateway there are 2 options.  

1) Set up a recurring payment through the gateway.  This can incurre additional charges.  

2)Use your serverside code to re-bill each period.  In this case, you store the credit card info on the gateway.  This does not mean you store the credit card data. The gateway, sends you back a transaction id after the first purchase, then each month you do a card lookup via the transaction id.  The actual way you do this varies by gateway.

The reason it costs more by a traditional processor is because of the higher risk of chargeback.  The reason there are not extra charges for something like paypal et el is because they charge higher rates to start with.  

The fees for a traditional processor & gateway can be confusing like buying a used car.  However, the net price for monthly transactions in the $2K to $3K range will be less expensive.  The E-Z options like paypal/square make it "easy" by charging the highest average where a traditional processor will have multiple rate tiers depending on the card type. (guess who pays the miles/perks? the merchant does through higher discount rates)

Thanks for your reply padas… we are using and want to stick with PayPal to handle payments… can you suggest the best possible set up for PayPal... i also see there is suscription payments too on top of recurring PayPal payments...

Subscription and recurring are similar.   If you have an annual contract that automatically renews, I think that would be recurring payment.

I would use one of the api's https://developer.paypal.com/webapps/developer/index.  if that is too hard to handle for now, the easy way is to use the buy now button for recurring payments https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/standard-integration.  1 minute set up, place the code on your site and your good.

Thanks, maybe preapproved payments would be a good idea too

I don't know what a pre approved payment is other then you run an auth only?   The payment types are


Since you are using paypal, no need to over think it. Look through your choices and make your decision. My suggestion based on what you disclosed is you need a subscription if the price is the same each year.  https://www.paypalobjects.com/webstatic/mktg/docs/subscription_button_guide112012.pdf
You can find the pdf by logging into your paypal account, go to merchants tab, then create a payment button (the top left square).  The direct link is https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/standard-integration 

I think I have answered your original question, if you need more details on something specific, just close this out and ask a new more specific question with all the good details.

Thanks Padas and Angeleye,

I am using PreApproved payments for other services on my site that other users use and i spoke with PayPal yesterday and they said they could update my API profile to allow me to use PreApprovals for this so i can process the payment on a 365 day basis.

I do not want to use a single suscription button as my users need to sign up when they are using my site and if their suscription is cancelled i need the IPN to trigger this and suspend their account.

So i guess that leaves me with either PreApproved Payments or a Recurring Payment Profile

@AngleEye - is there any reason why you would choose Recurring Profile over PreApproved Payments for this... i would like to use PreApproved payments as they are working well for another service on my site... however i would like to implement the best option... which do you think would be a better option: Recurring VS Preapproved?

Thanks in advance for your help guys...

If Preapproval is working well for you I'd probably stick with it.

The only reason I like recurring payments is because then PayPal's system handles processing those payments and I don't have to build CRON jobs and use my server resources to process payments.  This becomes more of a hassle the more and more subscriptions you have to manage.  

One of the advantages of Preapproval, though, is that you can process any amount you need to (as long as it's within the limits of the preapproval profile) where-as recurring payments process the same amount every time with limited ability to adjust the pricing.

Another thing I like about recurring payments is that you can do it with Payments Pro so that customers can enter credit card details directly into the website, and you get full ability to process credit card payments along-side PayPal payments.  You can do credit cards with Preapproval, too, but then it always redirects through PayPal.  The lightbox integration makes this a little smoother, but still not ideal for many of my clients.  

So it really just depends on what works best for you with your scenario.

>I do not want to use a single suscription button as my users need to sign up when they are using my site and if their suscription is cancelled i need the IPN to trigger this and suspend their account.

You would do this with the API.

Thanks guys... i think i will use PreApproved Payments because Payments Pro is not available in Ireland so i can't capitalise on some of the features it offers for Recurring Payments

Last Question(s)... i promise :-)

01 - if it costs my members $20 a year, how do i handle their first initial payment while ALSO setting up the preapproval... so i just instantly process $20 when they sign up and then get them to Approve and Agree to the PreApproval?

02 - i think you need to set the maximum amount of times that your API can make the PreApproval on behalf of your member... considering it will be happening once a year... should i just set it as 50 (50 years) or is there a better option / way to handle this

Thanks in advance for your help...