Advanced Features Guide

Express Checkout Advanced Features Guide April 2012 43
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Handling Recurring Payments
Set up a recurring payment to handle subscription and other payments that occur on a fixed
schedule.
 Recurring Payments Demo
How Recurring Payments Work
To view a video that demonstrates how to set up Recurring Payments, navigate to: Recurring
Payments Demo
When you support recurring payments for a buyer, you create a recurring payments profile.
The profile contains information about the recurring payments, including details for an
optional trial period and a regular payment period. Both periods contain information about the
payment frequency and payment amounts, including shipping and tax, if applicable.
After creating a profile, PayPal automatically queues payments based on the billing start date,
billing frequency, and billing amount. Payments reoccur until the profile expires, there are too
many failed payments to continue, or you cancel the profile.
NOTE: When using Express Checkout, the buyer can also cancel a recurring payments
profile.
PayPal funds queued payments using the normal payment method hierarchy within the buyer’s
PayPal account.
After creating a recurring payments profile, you can view profile details or cancel the profile
from your PayPal account. You can also access recurring payments reports from the PayPal
Business Overview page.
Also, after creating a recurring payments profile, you can use the Recurring Payments API to
do the following:
 Get information details about a recurring payments profile.
 Change the status of a recurring payments profile.
 Update the details of the recurring payments profile.
 Bill the outstanding amount of the recurring payments profile.
Limitations
The current release of the Recurring Payments API has the following limitations:
 A profile can have at most one optional trial period and a single regular payment period.
 The profile start date may not be earlier than the profile creation date.