2006

Payflow Link Recurring Billing Service User’s Guide 1
1
Introduction
Recurring Billing Service is a scheduled payment solution that enables you to automatically
bill your customers at regular intervals—for example, a monthly fee of $42 for 36 months with
an initial fee of $129.
About Recurring Billing Service
To configure a customer to be automatically billed on a schedule, you define a recurring
billing profile for that customer. The profile specifies the credit card account to bill, the
associated contact information, the amount to charge each time, the payment period (monthly,
weekly, and so on), and the term (the number of payments) of the agreement.
When you submit the data, PayPal generates the new profile, activates it, and automatically
performs the billing on the specified schedule. As time goes on, the profile stores both the
configuration information that you supplied and the transaction and payment history for the
account. When the term is complete, the profile is mature and no further automated
transactions occur.
When defining the profile, you have the option to perform an initial transaction that differs
from the recurring transaction, for example, to perform a no-charge transaction that validates
the account information or to charge an initial fee. In addition, you can specify how to handle
declined transactions.
You can also perform the following tasks:
z Search for profiles by profile ID, profile name, credit card number, comment, and amount
of payment.
z Convert any Sale or Delayed capture transaction into a recurring profile.
z Prepare reports.
z Send email receipts and notification of failed transactions to customers (available through
PayPal Manager only).
z Deactivate profiles with payment problems.
z Specify criteria for automatic cancellation of profiles with chronic payment problems.
NOTE: You must obtain each customer’s consent to bill them on an automated schedule.
Appendix A contains additional information.