I've making a SaaS that allows customers to subscribe to a plan, and use coupons at the checkout stage. The coupons give the customers X% off for X months, and by default, everyone gets a 7 day trial when they subscribe.
What is confusing me is the documentation. In one section it says that you should create SetupIntents to take a payment and elsewhere it says to use tokens.
I'm in the middle of coding the payment flow, but I just wanted to check to see if my logic and understanding is correct. Could anyone validate the below?
Customer enters card number and coupon
Call Stripe, get token for card
Send token and coupon to server
Create Stripe customer with token
Create Subscription with discount and pass customer ID
What has now happened is an authorisation attempt was made. If SCA is required, then the subscription status is incomplete and the latest invoice payment intent status requires action.
At this point, I can redirect my user to the SCA Flow using handleCardPayment() to prompt 3DS, and once complete the subscription status is then active.
If the invoice payment fails for any reason, then the subscription state is incomplete and the payment intent requires has a payment action required status. At this point, I should present my customer with the React Elements form again, and call the stripe.invoices.pay endpoint with the new card token
Going forwards, all subscription charges should not need further SCA approval, however if the customer changes plan or the bank requests it, then I can point my user back through the SCA Flow process
A diagram of the flow is here: Green is UI, Orange is Server, Blue is Stripe
Is there anything I have missed or misunderstood here? I've been reading about creating SetupIntents and PaymentIntents, but I'm not sure I need this?
If you are creating subscriptions using the Stripe Billing product they handle creating the PaymentIntent(if you are taking a payment immediately) or a SetupIntent (if you are setting up a trial or metered billing). All that you really have to do different is handleCardPayment (for payments) or handleCardSetup (for setting up trials and metered billing). This section in the docs is pretty good.
If you are not using billing they have a video on their Stripe Developers Youtube channel which may help clear up any confusion.
Hope this helps :)
Welcome fellow sufferer, cards and tokens are implemented in Stripe Charges API which is not SCA compilant. If you want use Stripe for payments inside the EU you should use payment intents.
Card tokens are also allowed for creating payment intents.
But if you want reduce the number of necessary authentications you should use setup intents (with usage = "off-session") for creating payment methods and not card tokens.
I have a lot of old customers who have still registered with the Charges API. I use the following strategy:
New customers always register via Setup Intents and Payment Methods.
Old customers use the Charges API until their tokens become invalid. Then they must also use setup intents and payment methods.
Of course, the customers do not notice much of it.
In summary, I would always use payment methods and setup intents for new customers and card updates. Only with the setup intents can you ensure that your customers have to authenticate themselves as rarely as possible.
EDIT: The crucial point is off-session payments that occur with subscriptions. The Stripe procedure is described here: https://stripe.com/docs/payments/cards/saving-cards#saving-card-without-payment
Related
We have our own payment processing system. This takes a customer token from Stripe's response after initially checking out, and uses it each month to charge the customers card.
We want to do similar for mobile wallets, like Apple Pay.
However, Stripe docs indicate that it only returns a token which is 'single use', so the customer would have to authenticate the payment each month:
We aren't able to integrate with Stripe's 'subscriptions' service, as we'd have to migrate across entirely to Stripe - which we can't do.
So as a result, is it possible to get a reusable token - or does the 'subscription' it's referring to mean that we can get a reusable token in the same way as a standard card payment?
And by reusable token - I mean, the customer doesn't need to authenticate the payment each month.
Hope that makes sense!
When you accept an Apple Pay payment, you can still save the underlying card for future payments. This will then work whether you use Billing (their recurring payments product) or just create one-time payments yourself.
The call out from Stripe in their docs is more around the rules coming from Apple. If your customer is checking out in your application or website, you are expected to show them the Apple Pay UI to confirm the payment again instead of using a previously saved card. On the other hand, if you are doing recurring payments, you can use the previously saved card for future payments.
The integration itself is fairly straightforward. You would create a PaymentIntent server-side and collect the card details client-side whether via Apple Pay or not. Since you want to save card details for future payments you would also pass setup_future_usage: 'off_session' on the PaymentIntent creation. After a successful payment, a PaymentMethod of type card would be attached to the customer with the id pm_123 and you could use this in future recurring payments.
This flow is covered in Stripe docs here and also applies to Apple Pay and this section covers how to make the future payments.
Before migrating to the Payment Intents API the user's credit card payment was confirmed and charged on the server side using the token (received from stripe.createToken) after the purchase has been completed. This gave us the possibility not to confirm the payment in case any errors happens.
Now, with the Payment Intents API the payment confirmation happens already on the client side (stripe.confirmCardPayment) which is a problem in case an error happens on the server side while completing the purchase as the credit card has already been charged. A refund is not valid solution your Stripe fees won't be refunded.
How can we implement card payments with the Payment Intents API but confirm the payment at the final end of the purchase (as in the legacy workflow)? Or how can we prevent the credit card from being charged in case an error occurs during the checkout workflow?
Unfortunately, we couldn't find a solution to this problem in the documentation.
Help appreciated!
Here are the docs: https://stripe.com/docs/payments/payment-intents/migration
What you are looking for is modeled via "manual confirmation" of a PaymentIntent: https://stripe.com/docs/payments/accept-a-payment-synchronously.
It isn't Stripe's recommended integration. The recommended approach is to confirm client-side and listen to webhooks for payment confirmation.
This is because with manual confirmation, there is a higher chance of customer "drop off" where they authenticate your PaymentIntent on your webpage but close it out, meaning you lose your client->server roundtrip, leaving your payment unconfirmed (eventhough the customer thinks they authenticated hence paid).
Additionally, manual confirmation only works for card type payments, it is not supported for other payment methods based in other regions like iDEAL or SEPA Debit etc.
In our case, we wanted to authenticate the card payment at the end directly after making the charge. The Stripe support was able to help us with the following answer:
As I understand you would like to authenticate the payment at the end directly after making the charge. There is a solution to this, with the capture_method being set to Manual - https://stripe.com/docs/api/payment_intents/create#create_payment_intent-capture_method. What this would mean is, that the charge will be made and the user / client would be able to confirm the payment afterwards in the Dashboard directly.
This method is called Auth and Capture. Place a hold on a card to reserve funds now but only capture them after your business completes the service. When a payment is authorized, the bank guarantees the amount and holds it on the customer’s card for up to seven days, or two days for in-person payments using Terminal. You can find more information along with the API's under this Link: https://stripe.com/docs/payments/capture-later#authorize-only
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.
I've been reading Stripe's api documentation (v3) and it's not apparent to me when to use Stripe's Invoice vs PaymentIntent objects. From reading the documentation, here's what I understand:
Stripe sees payment intents being the primary way of facilitating payments through their API going forward and Charges will be deprecated at some point.
Processing an Invoice creates a PaymentIntent under the hood and and initiates payment right away. What I don't understand is why is there no destination account field for the Invoice? If the Invoice is defaulted to be sent to the platform's Stripe account (this is an assumption I am making since there is no destination field), why there is an application_fee_amount field which is essentially the platform's "cut" of the transaction?
A PaymentIntent allow you to specify a destination account while taking an "application" or "platform" fee so you don't have to generate a transfer yourself.
A PaymentIntent and Invoice can be processed at time of creation or deferred until later in your payment lifecycle.
My use case requires me to conduct payments between two parties and take a "platform fee" for each transaction. I have successfully done this by creating a PaymentIntent and using the connected Customer account's credit card on file and populating the transfer_data field with the amount to send to the 2nd party involved in the transaction.
I started looking into Stripe's invoicing api since I am planning on building an invoicing solution for my platform and thought it'd be best to leverage what Stripe has to offer, but I'm failing to see a benefit for me to leverage it since I also need to keep track of transaction ids for the payment intents and taxes based on zip code (it looks like Stripe doesn't do this automatically so I might be out of luck here).
I couldn't find a way to get a transactionId for processing an Invoice but I see that the chargeId gets returned as part of the response when you confirm a PaymentIntent (https://stripe.com/docs/api/payment_intents/confirm).
So the questions I have are:
Why is there no destination account field for the Invoice? Does it automatically get send to the platform's Stripe account and require you to manually create a transfer?
Is there an easy way to get a transactionId from an Invoice?
Is there a way to get a transactionId when creating a PaymentIntent and setting the confirm=true so the PaymentIntent gets processed immediately?
For a platform that will have an invoicing flow and facilitate transactions on behalf of two parties, is it recommended to use payment intents, invoicing, or both?
What's the difference between a charge and transaction? When paying an Invoice, a charge id gets returned in the response but when paying a payment intent, a transaction id gets returned.
Thanks in advance!
You can think of invoices as subsets of payment intent, kind of the same way subscriptions are subsets of invoices.
What I don't understand is why is there no destination account field for the Invoice?
Actually there is one, but the field is transfer_data[destination]. Also, note that whenever an invoice is finalized, it will contain a payment intent, which is expandable, and with which you should be able to solve most of the issues you rose in your question.
To sum up:
Yes there is, as explained above.
Expand the invoice's payment intent object.
I'm not used to work with transactions, but I guess you could leverage their metadata to reference your invoice or vice verse to help you retrieve the need object in needed time.
As explained above, their is not dichotomy between those, if your invoicing your clients, the you should use stripe's invoicing system.
From what I see in the docs, transactions only concern purchase 'internal' to stripe, with issued cards. Charges are the attempts stripe will make to charge your bank account through the network, when a charge succeeds, the payment intent status is set to succeeded otherwise the payment intent might attempt more charges or stop trying at some point, and the payment intent will be set to canceled more about payment intent statuses here. In short payment intents are a subset of charges.
I hope this helped and didn't come too late, the answer might still be improve in the future, if others edit it or as I will learn more about stripe's issuing product.
I have a subscription, I collect card details on signup with a 7 day trial, after which the subscription bills monthly.
From what I understand the subscription API is not SCA compliant. Instead
An off_session payment Intent must first be setup when collecting card details.
At the end of each month a scheduler must be triggered to attempt to charge the registered card.
Is this the case? Am I now responsible for scheduling payments?
Update
For those who want some starter code, I created a working playground here with subscriptions, frontend (react) and backend (express) on glitch.
It's not true that Stripe's Subscription API is not SCA-ready, it is, and you don't have to set up your own scheduling like that. The docs you linked to are generally aimed at processing one-off payments(like saving a customer's details and then allowing them to use them again when they re-visit your site to purchase something new, for example) as opposed to recurring ones.
https://stripe.com/docs/billing/subscriptions/payment describes how to set up a subscription in a way that is SCA-ready. While the customer is on-session on your payment page, you collect card details and create a subscription for the customer, which will generally attempt a payment for the first billing period. You then check the status of the subscription after it's created, and handle the outcomes:
the subscription is active and the payment was successful, so you can proceed with provisioning your service to the customer.
the subscription is incomplete — for SCA purposes, let's say this is because 3D Secure authentication was required for that first payment. In this case, the latest_invoice of the subscription exposes a PaymentIntent property, and you use that PaymentIntent in conjunction with your frontend code using stripe.js to walk the customer through authenticating the payment, and that activates the subscription.
the subscription is trialing — if the subscription doesn't involve an initial payment, like when using a trial period for example, you can also check if the subscription has a pending_setup_intent. You can use this on your frontend to have the customer complete a 3D Secure authentication, so that future payments(like the first one after the trial) are more likely to successfully claim an exemption and not require having the user authenticate at that point.
You can also instead use Stripe Checkout to easily collect payment details and set up a customer and subscription for you, while also handling any initial authentication that's needed : https://stripe.com/docs/payments/checkout/server#create-subscriptions
As for the recurring payments, Billing can handle that for you. You can configure you settings to automatically email the customer to complete 3D Secure if it's encountered on a recurring payment. So you can absolutely build an SCA-ready solution with the subscriptions API on Stripe.