Change plan for PayPal customer without new charges
I'm currently integrating CheddarGetter's PayPal support into my site's implementation of the CG API. With my current credit card-based setup, I can separate subscription update actions into (1) changing plans, and (2) changing the card used to make payments. In other words, my users can switch plans without having to re-enter payment details, and vice versa.
Is this setup possible for customers who use PayPal? For example...
- A customer is already on a paying plan
- They wish to upgrade to a more expensive plan
- I charge monthly, and won't charge at the new rate until their next regularly scheduled bill date
- They select the new plan on my site, and I update their CG user
account via the API without sending them to
PayPal
(nothing's changed with their payment method, after all)
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Support Staff 1 Posted by Marc Guyer on 12 Jul, 2011 08:46 PM
Hi Frank!
Yes, you can change plans independently. However, you might consider having the customer go through the PayPal workflow at the point of upgrade. The reason for that is because preapprovals are only good for a year or $2000 whichever comes first. You could look at the expiration date (actually ccExpirationDate even for PayPal method) in the xml to determine if the expiration is sufficiently near to require a new preapproval. I would argue that under certain circumstances it's actually more convenient to go through the workflow since the customer is already on the site.
2 Posted by Frank Koehl on 12 Jul, 2011 10:16 PM
Good to see you too, Marc. :-)
This is my first foray in PayPal for recurring purposes, and I had no idea that the preapprovals were a renewing construct. That alone made asking the question worthwhile. I would concur that sending them thru the workflow, if only to renew the preapproval, is a wise move.
That raises another question. Say I have a customer paying via PayPal, approaching the 1-year account anniversary. You're saying that I need to send them through PayPal, even if they make no changes to their account whatsoever, is that correct? If so, I'd recommend adding that info to the PayPal API article.
Support Staff 3 Posted by Marc Guyer on 14 Jul, 2011 03:23 PM
Thanks for the suggestion. We've added something about that to the overview section of that doc.
Marc Guyer closed this discussion on 14 Jul, 2011 03:23 PM.