Subscription Recurring Billing

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Check our Reference Materials for more details about a payment connector.

Overview

First, let's get to know what a recurring billing process means.

Recurring billing is when a merchant automatically charges a subscriber for specified goods or services on a prearranged schedule. Recurring billing requires the merchant to get the subscriber's payment details permission one time upfront for recurring charges, then continues with scheduled charges until the subscriber withdraws permission.

Now let’s talk about the two steps in recurring billing:

• Payment authorisation
• Payment capture

There are some exceptions where payment capture is the only step. However, in most common payment gateways it is recommended to take both steps to increase recurring billing success percentage.

Authorisation is the first step of a recurring billing process. This is a chain of commands to be followed in order to successfully launch the first step:

1. The merchant sends a request to their acquirer (payment gateway) — PayPal for example.
2. The payment gateway then submits a request to the payment details issuer.
3. The issuer reviews the subscriber's account and decides if enough funds exist to cover the cost of the sale.
4. If they do, an authorization hold is made which reduces the customer's credit for the amount of the sale.
5. Then an authorization code is sent back to the payment gateway which instantly responds to the merchant with a code for approval or error.
6. If an error code is issued, the transaction is still incomplete.

Capture, on the other hand, refers to the process by which a transaction moves out of the pending state and the merchant gets their money.

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Note

The merchant must send a request to capture the transaction amount within a certain number of days, to verify that they really want to process it before the funds are released.

Cleeng-Managed vs. Externally-Managed Recurring Billing

There are two approaches in creating a connector:

Cleeng-Managed Recurring Billing - It's a recurring billing flow where Cleeng manages when an authorisation/ capture/ termination is made.

Externally Managed Recurring Billing - If the recurring billing flow is managed outside of Cleeng, it is gateway-specific on how to notify about successful/failed payment attempts or subscription status changes.

For your understanding, we have prescribed a step-by-step guide on both approaches. Choose your preferred one and continue with the setup.

Up Next

If you want to continue with Cleeng-Managed Recurring Billing, go straight to the next step.
If you want to find out about the other option - go to Externally Managed Recurring Billing.