I am working with Stripe to manage subscriptions. I would like to delegate payment of a subscription to another customer.
Specifically, I want the customer of the subscription to reap the benefits of a subscription, but assign another customer to pay for it.
Is that possible? If not, what are the possible workarounds? Thanks.
Notes:
Once a subscription is created, an invoice is automatically generated and is not editable according to what I have tried previously
I would like to keep as close to the usual subscription flows as possible, as I don't want to lose out on things such as being able to pro-rate an invoice (which becomes messy if I have to manually craft invoices myself)
Related
I am updating my billing page which used Stripe JS V2 tokens and the Charges API (Subscriptions). The new(er) Payment Element looks slick from a future proofing standpoint, but am I understanding it correctly that the Customer object must be created prior to populating the payment form?
I only create the Customer once the payment token is obtained and a user has a clear intent to purchase after evaluating during a trial period. Otherwise my Stripe Dashboard is overrun with "empty" trial users that never sign up (I only have around a 10% signup rate from account creation). I guess this is mostly just a personal peeve, but I also just don't like to share user data and figured this way I would only be sharing with a third party once they become actual customers of mine.
Since a Subscription cannot be created without providing a Customer as part of the required parameters, am I stuck using the Card Element and the older Charges API if I don't create a Customer for every user in my system?
You really should just create a Customer up front. It will be required if you want to use trials with Subscriptions and will be cleaner in the long run.
For a workaround, which I would not overall recommend, you could use a SetupIntent with Payment Element to collect the customer's payment method without actually creating a Customer object. Then you can later create the Customer object and attach the PaymentMethod that was previously collected and then create the Subscription.
I have a long list of old customers (>10K) in Stripe for which I would like to give a new trial period. Is there a way to bulk process those or we have to do that manually one by one?
I guess this depends entirely on what exactly you mean by 'new trial'. Do these customers have pre-existing Stripe subscriptions?
There's really no way to do this via the dashboard. However if there are no pre-existing subscriptions, you could programmatically create subscriptions for each customer object accordingly. You can specify the trial period on the price or on a per subscription basis.
As there are no batch endpoints for these operations, please be wary of the rate limiting if working with the API in this way
Anyone know how to make a Stripe subscription charge a card automatically on future period payments using the new PaymentsIntent SCA approach?
Stripe's docs are in need of major pruning. I've never seen such convoluted and confusing docs as these ones.
One of the confusing parts is where they say in the docs for PaymentsIntents:
confirmation_method:
automatic
(Default) PaymentIntent can be confirmed using a publishable key. After next_actions are handled, no additional confirmation is required to complete the payment.
manual
All payment attempts must be made using a secret key. The PaymentIntent returns to the requires_confirmation state after handling next_actions, and requires your server to initiate each payment attempt with an explicit confirmation.
If I put automatic, the handleCardAction doesn't work anymore on the front end. If it has to be manual, does that mean that all future recurring payments (say Month 2, 3, etc) will need some kind of SCA confirmation by the user?
I haven't found any elements examples for paymentintents and subscriptions with SCA and varying plans and prices not pre-set on the backend as they depend on each individual's parameters.
If I use manual and handleCardAction, the subscription stays incomplete, despite the payment going through. If I use confirmCardPayment, the SCA popup never shows.
Looking further into the subscription and intent objects, I noticed that a new subscription created on the server comes with its own paymentIntent object. So does it mean one has to stop creating a separate paymentIntent with own id? If you do, it doesn't work for completing the subscription, which stays as incomplete.
However, the subscription's paymentIntent has a confirmation_method set as automatic by default -- this results in an error after SCA on the frontend: "You cannot confirm this PaymentIntent because it has already succeeded after being previously confirmed". Interesting, why did it ask for the SCA then in the status: "requires_action"?? Are we supposed to change manually the confirmation_method on a subscription to "manual"??
All this is quite confusing how to make subscription / paymentIntent work with SCA.
My logic is simple: user customises a subscription and enters card details, all of which gets sent to the server => Server creates a new plan, product, customer and subscription => Sends intent (from Subscription?) back to FE => If required, SCA is performed and the subscription is confirmed. Is this not how it's supposed to be done? I don't have pre-set plans as they can vary. I just need the ability to charge a user automatically the same amount they paid for the next period.
The examples and docs I've seen so far don't address the above use case. If anyone knows how to do it or can point to an example of how stripe elements and paymentIntents work with SCA and subscriptions that actually works and activates the subscription?
Stripe has a complete guide to fixed-price Subscriptions with Elements that sounds like it covers what you're trying to do.
When you're working with Stripe Billing (Subscriptions and Invoices) you rarely need to interact with the underlying Payment Intents; those are an implementation detail inside of each Invoice.
To implement a free plan for a subscription, I have created a plan with a monthly charge of $0.
Is this the correct way to subscribe users to a free plan so that they don't have to pay?
Will users still get invoices when they are subscribed to a free plan? If so, how can I avoid sending invoices to those subscribed to the free plan?
Stripe Subscriptions are designed to manage billing and payments, rather than "tracking who is using a product". An "active" Subscription in Stripe is one that is being paid for, rather than one that is "being actively used".
You could conceivably set up a Subscription with an indefinite free trial, but really, you're doing a bunch of work to keep updating it to "remain free". I'd suggest taking a look at what you are actually trying to accomplish, because you're probably trying to track a user of your services, rather than track that a user doesn't pay you anything.
If you want to track a subscription with a zero plan on Stripe it will of course work. I use zero plans all the time.
All the invoices will be generated each month but will have a zero value which means they will automatically be marked as paid.
Invoice was finalized and automatically marked as paid because the amount due was 0.00kr
I am using custom accounts with custom integration so there is no automatic email going out from stripe for me, but I do receive the entire stack of events like I would any normal invoice which i have to deal with.
The event progression is: Invoice created -> finalized -> paid -> changed. Although instant the webhook events all come in.
There is no issue with zero plans, everything shows up in the Stripe admin and works just like any subscription. You can start out with a free plan and upgrade them later - the payment information is gathered and can be charged later so it is all good.
Say we've setup a Stripe Subscription plan. i.e. $30/mo. (Note: the billing/account info is stored on Stripe.)
Let's say we want to offer the option to the customer to buy a year of the service upfront, and if they do, they only pay $25/mo (i.e. $300).
Is there any way to conceptually link the "paid upfront" payment, and the Subscription plan? There'll related, except the second one is simply being paid up front, and at a discount because of it.
Or is the second situation simply an unrelated charge to the setup plan/subscription, and just submitted as a charge object?
(I want to make sure I'm organizing payments in Stripe the best way).
There's no universal "best way", it's up to you to decide which way is best suited for your application.
The simplest way, API-wise, would be to create a one-off charge for the yearly amount. But it is then up to you to track that the customer has paid for an entire year and should have access to your service during that time (if that's applicable to your business model).
If you'd rather have the customer being tracked as a subscriber on Stripe's end, what you can do is set up another plan for the correct amount and interval (i.e. $250/year).
Then, when a new customer signs up for this offer, you would:
subscribe them to the plan (this will immediately charge the customer for the $250 periodic amount)
immediately cancel the subscription with at_period_end set to true. This will prevent the customer from being billed again in one year, but will leave the subscription active until then.