Jump to content

Paypal subscriptions 4.0 no longer work, IPS says to cancel them?? Can't you create a legacy gateway?


chilihead

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 122
  • Created
  • Last Reply

​Yes, the text says that, but it’s unclear what that means. It could also mean some kind of authorization codes are stored, but not the full credit card data. I have no idea. 

​Indeed, greater transparency is needed.

Perhaps someone at IPS would like to cancel all their auto-renewing packages and we'll see how company finances look in six months... 

​Indeed, if only! The hand would be on the other foot then :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

​Yes, the text says that, but it’s unclear what that means. It could also mean some kind of authorization codes are stored, but not the full credit card data. I have no idea. 

​Indeed, greater transparency is needed.

​When setting up the gateway on IPS4:
76ALgQB.png

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for posting the screenshot. It seems there are three issues here.

1. The largest issue. The older API is not being used to create a legacy gateway, so there is no more connection to PP with our current subscriptions.

2. If the customer chooses PayPal instead of the transparent PP with CC, the subscription won't work for some reason. "If they choose to pay by using the PayPal site, recurring payments are not handled automatically and will be issued an invoice in the same way." So we HAVE to have this CC mode on, and to use recurring billing only, turn PP off? There are no recurring settings anywhere, at the product or gateway. How does this work? If it has a renewal and they use a CC it is recurring? This is a horrible set-up unless I am missing something.

3. And "If they opt not to store their card details, they will be issued an invoice at renewal time and sent an email with instructions to pay."
It seems here IPS is saying they can click to get the CC screen and pay, but not "store" their CC, meaning subscriptions will not work. Also you can turn CC storage off at the admin level. So this would also turn off recurring payments. The old way was simple and effective!

This is the way I use 3.4 currently. I have 2 PayPal gateways set up. One is called PayPal Auto-Pay to make it clear that they will be auto-billed, so I turn recurring on at the gateway level, and when I want to offer auto-pay only, for example, on a monthly product, I select only that gateway. I do not want to sell monthly memberships that have manual renewals that is what I have yearly for. On yearly, I can use both gateways, so they can select PP or PP Auto-Pay.

In 3.4 this is in the gateway: Enable PayPal Subscriptions Support? Y/N. Where is the equivalent in 4.0? This setting works to turn any product with a renewal into a subscription. So if you don't want that you add a second gateway with it off, and you can select one or both gateways per product. Simple. Been doing that for years.

It was much simpler and I have no idea how I would achieve that now. I don't see any recurring setting at the product or gateway level. Is there any insight and how you would force auto-pay for certain packages in 4.0? And why directly with PP won't work?

And please let us know the status of the old subscriptions. These are things I will need to know before upgrading. As of this moment these settings, or decisions, would not work for me. 

Last question. Have you changed 2Checkout as well? I have many subscriptions with them as well. And I need the old to work and the new to work the same. I don't see a recurring setting in that gateway either. 

Thanks. 4.0 looks promising but we do have businesses to run, and appreciate your attention. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I do exactly the same as chilihead above.  I have a PayPal Single Pay Gateway and a PayPal Recurring Payment Gateway.  I let my users decide.  I also have Stripe.  Some users opt to leave their credit card on the site, some don't. Some trust PayPal, some don't.

We need options.  As it currently stands, it is a deal breaker.

Although the comment above about turning off recurring payments to IPS was snarky, I think it was point on.  A lot of companies, including this one, earn money through the inherent laziness of users.  It is easy to let my subscription here run then it is to turn it on and off.  Though, IPS also chooses to penalize people that do that as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Management

We have discussed this at length internally and we are going to do a bridge to handle existing subscriptions. Note, this is not a gateway and future "subscriptions" will need to be processed via PayPal's new recurring payments API and please understand the old subscriptions method is considered to be part of the classic API. Unfortunately, they do not provide a method for converting those subscriptions and their SOP is to recommend bulk canceling and sending new invoices. You're free to take that up directly with PayPal, if you wish. I know I've recreated payment profiles for Apple, Spotify and others... though I didn't find it to be the end of the world. :)

In short, we are working on a bridge to accommodate existing subscriptions so as not to disrupt or inconvenience existing subscribers upon upgrade. If you want/need/desire the legacy PayPal API functionality beyond that in Commerce, there may be a marketplace opportunity for a gateway utilizing the old PayPal API. 

Do not quote me as this is barring any unforeseen issues, but this should be in one of the next couple of releases. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lindy, first of all this sounds great and thanks for your attention to that matter!

I feel this new API will be great because we can change pricing on recurring payments, so we can not only raise prices, but lower, and include them in offers if we wish (that one will be tricky but it's possible).

My question is, what about the part where Mark said if they choose PayPal directly instead of CC when checking out in the new PP gateway, there is no subscription started? So the only way to trigger it is with CC and storing it? Is this a new PP decision or IPS decision? If it is an IPS decision so all new recurring subscriptions have pricing flexibility, then I may be onboard because of the flexibility, but just asking so I know. (Is the price not flexible directly with PP?) I am not on 4 yet but will be. Thanks!

PS. A good way to get members off the old API and onto the new will be to offer a promo. Should be possible with the new flexibility and only members on the old API would not be able to reap it. I'll have to figure that out when using it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One more question. Is 2Checkout (and any other gateway) going to have this price flexibility as well? I don't see a recurring option anymore for 2CO so is it handled the same way as PP now, on the frontend? And what happens to the current subs? If no flexibility I will most likely turn it off and use PP only for recurring.

I already use 2CO so need to know this one. Thanks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Probably, just raised the following ticket (918360) with support (details omitted to provide user privacy):

Okay I have an issue with one legacy 3.4.7 subscriber which is likely to be replicated I feel with other legacy Subscribers once their subscription is due for renewal. So this is something we need to resolve with the subscriber whose subscription is due to renew today.

The subscriber concerned if xxxxx (yyyy@yyyy) and he takes a 'Monthly Support (standard)' subscription of £xx a month.

In the past with 3.4.7 this subscription renewed on the 13th of each month via PayPal and the IPN triggered and marked the payment as being paid with no problems at all.

After upgrading to IPS4 I expected an invoice to be raised which I'd then mark as paid manually once the Payment notification email came in via email.

I've also installed the PayPal Bridge and turned back on the IPN system within PayPal, and set the IPN to look at:

 XXXXXXX

Which I believe to be correct.

What has transpired this morning is:

  1. The Payment notification email has arrived from PayPal and the money has reached my account
  2. No invoice has been generated by IPS4 for xxx at all
  3. I assume the IPN has been triggered by PayPal and the bridge has either failed, or not worked as there was no invoice generated to match the payment to.

Therefore as a 'fix' I looked to generate an invoice for xxx manually (which I was going to mark as paid), but I got the following error:

renew.thumb.jpg.df7e1f12f66a7c1469646785

So could not even get that done.

So I / we need to work out why invoices are not being generated for migrated subscribers, and why I can't generate one manually. Once the issue(s) are fixed I need to ensure I can manually mark the invoices as paid once email notifications are received.

This will be the same situation for all Subscribers with the exception of 'yyy' who has migrated his subscription model to the new system. Therefore whatever the fix is, it will need to be applied to the system as a whole, or each subscriber manually rectified if it is a migrated setting issue.

Might be useful to see if others are having the same issues.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 Any way IPS could answer these? Thanks a lot.

Lindy, first of all this sounds great and thanks for your attention to that matter!

I feel this new API will be great because we can change pricing on recurring payments, so we can not only raise prices, but lower, and include them in offers if we wish (that one will be tricky but it's possible).

My question is, what about the part where Mark said if they choose PayPal directly instead of CC when checking out in the new PP gateway, there is no subscription started? So the only way to trigger it is with CC and storing it? Is this a new PP decision or IPS decision? If it is an IPS decision so all new recurring subscriptions have pricing flexibility, then I may be onboard because of the flexibility, but just asking so I know. (Is the price not flexible directly with PP?) I am not on 4 yet but will be. Thanks!

PS. A good way to get members off the old API and onto the new will be to offer a promo. Should be possible with the new flexibility and only members on the old API would not be able to reap it. I'll have to figure that out when using it.

 

One more question. Is 2Checkout (and any other gateway) going to have this price flexibility as well? I don't see a recurring option anymore for 2CO so is it handled the same way as PP now, on the frontend? And what happens to the current subs? If no flexibility I will most likely turn it off and use PP only for recurring.

I already use 2CO so need to know this one. Thanks.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

Well, I'm a noob to IPB... but I have a new community that took about 50 subscriptions out of the gate... only to discover, that customers were not getting an automatic payment subscription service, but were getting a "recurring invoice reminder to renew" service with an expiration date on it. That is NOT what either me or the customers were expecting and frankly, is absurd. It is safe to say, about 90% of those customers are not going to bother to renew and Im going to have to recontact everyone with a special discount deal or something to get them to come back.

This happened because it was not made clear to me that in order for 4.0 to have automatic renewal subscription service, you have to have an SSL purchased and the plan 100 on the hosted system. I am very disappointed that this detail was not made clear to me. It should be made very clear that if you want an automatic renewal, subscription service, you have to purchase an SSL and the plan 100... Anyways, moving forward... 

Is that true?  Can someone confirm that for me before I waste more time and money simply trying to get a basic automatic subscription service going?

Also, I have a stripe account, do any of you recommend stripe over the other payment methods? Is Stripe going to give me any conveniences or benefits not found in the other methods?

I am on 4.0...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We ended up with some users staying on the old 3.8.x Subscription system using the gateway. Of the new subscribers since moving to IPS 4.xx, as moving to SSL for Stripe is not valid for us, we're got users switching to direct bank transfer to my personal bank account, and others using the dire "recurring invoice reminder to renew" service.

Nobody is impressed with the new system at all, and I wish we could have stayed with the old system. I anticipate subscription take up since moving to IPS4 to be maybe reduced by 80%. Everyone loved the previous system of automatic subscription renewals via PayPal, nobody likes the new "recurring invoice reminder to renew" service, and none of my users want to go the credit card route.

You can use the PayPal credit card system of course for a monthly fee if you upgrade to a business account, not viable for us either.

If I had known about this with IPS4 we would not have uplifted to the new software.

The response I get from IPS is that this is all down to PayPal changing APIs, and they have no choice. However has the old 3.8x subscription system suddenly stopped working, I think not!

If I did not have a very close relationship with my small user pool we'd be shut down by now due to lack of finance.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wow, I am amazed that I feel like I am still not getting a clear answer, at least not one that will give me the confidence to make the investment into an SSL and the 100 plan upgrade they are telling me I have to do to get automatic renewals.

Can someone that is actually figured this out on 4.0, tell me what I have to do, to achieve an automatic subscription service?  Do I in fact have to:

- upgrade to hosting plan 100?

- purchase an SSL?

And if I do, ... as I understand it, I STILL will not be able to use subscriptions via Pay Pal... Is that correct? Or do I just need to get a specific Pay Pal service to make it work at that point?  Will the CC option through Pal Pal also create subscriptions?

If Pay Pal is out of the question and is not compatible for subscriptions on 4.0... as it seems people are saying... 

Then if I implement Stripe, will that do it for me?

It is not clear to me if I have to upgrade to the plan 100 and purchase an SSL to do this... and if/when I do, what payment method is available to me to avoid the "recurring invoice reminder to renew" service?

Can someone just give me a straight answer on the IPB requirements and which payment method is going to give me/us what we need if we are on 4.0?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Automatic subscription options as I understand it:

  • Credit Card via Paypal business
  • Credit card via Stripe/SSL
  • Credit card via alternative payment system

All those ill avoid "recurring invoice reminder to renew". That is as far as I got with my investigations as my users do not want to use credit cards. Hope that helps.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Recurring payments seem to have disappeared from 2Checkout too!

The only settings are:

Name REQUIRED
API Username REQUIRED
API Password REQUIRED
Available to

So what happens to our subscriptions and how do they create new ones?

I have many on 2CO so need to know this before upgrading. I never got an answer. In 3.4 I have recurring payments turned on and that is a second 2Checkout gateway, the other is off. So at checkout they can decide which they want. How do we do that now I don't see any settings?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

×
×
  • Create New...