Integration Guide

Table Of Contents
Express Checkout Integration Guide October 2009 91
Handling Recurring Payments
Recurring Payments With Express Checkout
10
Recurring payments terms
Recurring Payments With Express Checkout
During the Express Checkout flow, you can create one or more recurring payments and mix
recurring payments with other purchases.
The following diagram illustrates the typical processing flow to create recurring payments
during checkout.
Term Definition
Recurring payments profile Your record of a recurring transaction for a single customer. The profile
includes all information required to automatically bill the buyer a fixed
amount of money at a fixed interval.
Billing cycle One payment is made per billing cycle. Each billing cycle is made up of two
components.
z The billing period specifies the unit to be used to calculate the billing
cycle (such as days or months).
z The billing frequency specifies the number of billing periods that make
up the billing cycle.
For example, if the billing period is Month and the billing frequency is 2, the
billing cycle will be two months. If the billing period is Week and the billing
frequency is 6, the payments will be scheduled every 6 weeks.
Regular payment period The main subscription period for this profile, which defines a payment
amount for each billing cycle. The regular payment period begins after the
trial period, if a trial period is specified for the profile.
Trial period An optional subscription period before the regular payment period begins. A
trial period may not have the same billing cycles and payment amounts as
the regular payment period.
Payment amount The amount to be paid by the buyer for each billing cycle.
Outstanding balance If a payment fails for any reason, that amount is added to the profile’s
outstanding balance.
Profile ID An alphanumeric string (generated by PayPal) that uniquely identifies a
recurring profile.