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Can someone explain the difference between the two? From what I have read, subscription is the one where you grab the HTML button from PayPal, whereas recurring is done via the API.
Is that it or is there more to it?
If so, how do subscription customers cancel their subscription?
(And, why does PayPal make it so developers have to trawl forums for answers?!)
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The only difference that you will find in them is the timing and payment options. The recurring payment entirely depends on credit or debit card, while subscription may be developed for other payments. Moreover, in the recurring model, you have to store payment details, but the subscription system if flexible with it.
While PayPal waives the fees for many transactions, this is mostly applicable for transactions with other PayPal account holders. Non-PayPal transactions can be expensive for subscription billing customers. For example, business and premiere accounts are charged about 1.9-2.9 percent plus $0.30 per transaction.
PayPal Subscription Payments helps you manage scheduled payments, so your business runs smoothly. Enjoy flexibility for you and your customers. Easily create different plans and fee structures in more than 100 currencies.
Here's a simple recurring billing definition: it's a subscription. Or more precisely, the recurring billing definition is an ongoing payment on a periodic basis for a product or service. A subscriber will provide their credit card information to pay for the goods or services on a periodic basis.
PayPal's different type of recurring transactions:
Subscription
A subscription is created via a Website Payments Standard Subscribe button. Before 2009, the subscription profile ID started with S-XXXXXXXX. You are not able to manage these subscriptions via any API calls. After 2009 the subscription profile ID starts with I-XXXXXX. You are able to cancel these subscriptions via the ManageRecurringPaymentsProfileStatus API call.
Recurring Payments Profile
A recurring payments profile is created through the CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile API, and is accessible for both Express Checkout users, as well as those using Direct Recurring Payments as part of their Website Payments Pro Product.
If you use CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile via Express Checkout, you'll need prior authorization from the buyer, typically obtained by passing BILLINGTYPE=RecurringPayments in your initial SetExpressCheckout API call.
If you're using Direct Recurring Payments, you'll be able to directly pass in the credit card details into the CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile API call.
Recurring Billing
Available for Payflow Pro / Website Payments Pro Payflow Edition customers. This works similar to Direct Recurring Payments, except it's done through the Payflow API.
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In all cases, a 'profile' is created, and PayPal is the one doing the actual billing on the schedule that you provided. You don't need to make any further API calls for the subscription / recurring payments profile / recurring billing profile to be processed.
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And one more thing that I noticed.
When we make an API call to get the Transaction-details for a recurring/subscription transaction, the subscriptions which have their Profile-ID's starting with 'S-' have their TRANSACTIONTYPE as 'subscr_payment' and the subscriptions with Profile-ID's starting with 'I-' have their TRANSACTIONTYPE as 'recurring_payment'
Don't know if I am completely right.
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