Subscription Capabilities
Learn how you can benefit from BlueSnap's award-winning subscription capabilities
With our award-winning Subscription Billing engine, you can customize your recurring billing model, and reach more people around the world by offering more than just credit cards.
Read on to learn more about the subscription capabilities you can take advantage of.
BlueSnap's Subscription Billing Engine is available with both of our APIs, as well as our BuyNow Hosted Checkout solution.
If you are working with subscriptions in BlueSnap's APIs, refer to the Subscriptions Guide for:
If you are working with subscriptions in BlueSnap's Hosted Checkout Pages, refer to:
Supported Payment Methods
Subscriptions support the following payment methods: ACH, cards, mobile wallets, PayPal, and SEPA Direct Debit. For some additional payment methods, we provide Automated Subscription Reminders that notify customers when their subscription is expiring so they can re-purchase their subscription.
Recurring Billing
Customize any type of recurring billing model with flexible and dynamic subscription plans. Choose a predefined plan type with or without a trial period, or set up a custom plan. Full control over your subscription pricing means you set your recurring revenue model. Sit back and watch your sales roll in.
Subscription Order Management
You can manage existing subscription orders with any of these options:
- Canceling or activating subscriptions
- Auto-renew settings (i.e. continue the subscription or end it after the current payment period)
- Changing the subscription price, payment date, or plan
Account Updater to Keep Subscriptions Active
Account Updater automatically updates your shopper's subscription payment information so you don't lose sales when their card expires or changes. This feature is automatically enabled for all of our merchants, and no setup is required.
If you would like to be notified each time a shopper's subscription payment information is updated, you can request the Account Updater IPN to be enabled for your account.
Refer to On-demand IPN types
Automated Reminders for Alternate Payment Methods
We provide Automated Subscription Reminders to make renewals easy for shoppers who are paying with wires or another alternative payment method.
Once you have set up Automated Subscription Reminders, these additional payment methods automatically appear on your order pages for your subscription contracts. Shoppers who select an alternative payment method receive automated reminder emails with a link to easily confirm and renew their subscriptions.
Refer to Automated Subscription Reminders
Dunning Management (automated retries)
BlueSnap provides Dunning Management, a mechanism that automatically retries subscription purchases several times during a grace period.
When a recurring charge is declined by a processor, it has one of two decline types:
- Hard decline: Indicates that the charge should not be retried, and may occur due to a lost or stolen card, suspected fraud, or other reason.
- Soft decline: The charge failed this time but can be retried.
In case of a soft decline, BlueSnap automatically retries the charge 5, 10, and 14 days after the initial decline.
Retries are made only during the active grace period you define. The grace period is defined in the Cancel Subscription setting in the Advanced Recurring Settings area of your subscription contract.
If the charge is successfully completed in one of the retries, the subscription continues and the next payment date remains due as per the original contract.
If the charge is not successful in any of the retries, the subscription goes into suspended status after the last automatic retry. Once the grace period is over, it is automatically cancelled.
Example
The subscription is due on the first of the month, and there is a grace period of 20 days. If the charge fails, we automatically retry it 5, 10, and 14 days after the failure.
- If one of these retries is successful, the subscription continues and the next payment date remains due on the first of the month.
- If no retry is successful, the subscription goes into suspended status after the last automatic retry (i.e. on the 14th day after the first failure), and is cancelled 20 days after the first failure.
Merchant-Managed Subscriptions
If necessary, you can manage your own subscription plans and recurring billing, and easily process the payments through BlueSnap. For more information, refer to:
API tutorial for merchant-managed subscriptions:
Updated 3 days ago