Subscriptions
A subscription is the commitment that a specific consumer will use a specific plan for a pre-defined period of time.
The Subscriptions are handled by subscription endpoint which supports the following methods:
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Create Subscription
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Update Subscription
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Get Subscription
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Get All Subscription
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Delete Subscription
The Subscription APIs also enables the use of the below additional features:
Billing Agreement
The billing agreement represents the payment instrument details that the consumer has provided after giving explicit consent to the merchant for use in a specific subscription. This agreement ensures that recurring transactions can be processed without requiring the consumer to re-enter payment credentials.
The billing agreement includes the Stored Payment Option details, which the consumer has provided within the Subscription SDK. This stored payment option allows seamless recurring transactions by securely maintaining the payment credentials in compliance with PCI DSS requirements. Payment options stored within the Subscription SDK can only be added or deleted through the SDK to maintain security and data integrity.
Each time a consumer updates their payment details within the Subscription SDK, a new billing agreement is created and linked to their subscription. The system ensures that all subscription payments adhere to the latest stored payment option. Additionally, the SmartPay Subscription API enables merchants to manage the lifecycle of subscriptions and associated payment details, including handling billing cycles, payment series, and manual retries.
When a subscription is created, the billing agreement remains in a pending state until the consumer provides valid payment credentials through the SDK. Once the details are confirmed, the billing agreement is activated, allowing merchant-initiated transactions (MIT) to be processed automatically on each billing cycle.
Please refer to Data Model for object details.
Pause & Resume
General Details
This feature is strategic for the integrating merchants, as it offers an additional option to present to the end customers willing to cancel their Subscription; as in many cases pausing the subscription for a specific period (e.g., 2 months) and resuming it at a later stage is more appropriate than forcing the user to cancel their Subscription definitely if they want to stop the billing of their payment instrument. This would enable to present a better user experience for the customers and even achieve a better customer loyalty.
How to Pause a Subscription?
Please note that only the active Subscriptions could be paused.
Pausing a subscription could be simply achieved by calling our Update Subscription API and updating the status of the Subscription from active to paused.
How to Resume a Subscription?
You could simply resume a Subscription by calling our Update Subscription API and updating the status of the Subscription from paused to active.
Please note that our system is taking into consideration the period in which the Subscription was active, before it was paused, in order to take it into consideration in the first billing cycle following the resume.