Advanced Features Guide

Handling Recurring Payments
Modifying a Recurring Payments Profile
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54 April 2012 Express Checkout Advanced Features Guide
NOTE: You cannot modify the billing frequency or billing period of a profile. You can modify
the number of billing cycles in the profile.
You can modify the following profile information during the trial period or regular payment
period.
 Billing amount
 Number of billing cycles
NOTE: For recurring payments with the Express Checkout API, PayPal does not allow certain
updates, such as billing amount, within 3 days of the scheduled billing date.
The profile changes take effect with the next payment after the call to update the profile. Say,
for example, the buyer has made 1 trial payment out of a total of 3. You call
UpdateRecurringPaymentsProfile to increase the number of billing cycles to 5. This
provides the buyer with 4 additional trial payments. If you call
UpdateRecurringPaymentsProfile during the regular payment period, the changes take
effect with the buyer’s next scheduled regular payment.
For complete details, see the Name-Value Pair Developer Guide and Reference or the SOAP
API Reference.
Updating Addresses
When you update the subscriber shipping address, you must enter all of address fields, not just
those that are changing:
To update the subscriber’s street address, for example, specify all the address fields listed in
the Name-Value Pair Developer Guide and Reference or SOAP API Reference. Do not specify
only the street address field.
Updating the Billing Amount
For profiles created using Express Checkout, you can increase the recurring payment total
amount by 20% maximum in a fixed 180-day interval after profile creation. The 20%
maximum is based on the total amount of the profile at the beginning of the 180-day interval,
including any shipping or tax amount.
If, for example, you create a profile on March 10 with a total amount of $100, during the 180-
day interval from March 10 to September 6, you can increase the amount to a maximum of
$120 (120% of $100).
Suppose that during the first 180-day interval, you increased the payment amount to $110.
During the next 180-day interval (starting September 7), you can only increase the amount of
the payment to a maximum of $132 (120% of $110).