Subscriptions with WooPayments

With WooPayments, there are potentially two ways to sell subscription products:

• Using the built-in subscriptions feature.
• Using the Woo Subscriptions extension.

If you’re using the Woo Subscriptions extension with WooPayments, everything will work as covered in the Woo Subscriptions store manager guide. If you are using the built-in subscriptions feature of WooPayments, this guide is for you.

Eligibility requirements

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To be eligible to use subscriptions built-in to WooCommerce, you must:

• Be based in the United States.
• Have the WooPayments plugin active.
• Have a WooPayments account that is enabled for payments.
• Offer credit and debit cards via WooPayments as a payment method on checkout.

Enabling subscriptions

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To enable the built-in WooPayments subscriptions feature:

1. Go to Payments > Settings in your WordPress dashboard.
2. Scroll down to the Advanced Settings button and click it.
3. Check the “Enable Subscriptions with WooPayments” box.
4. Click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.

Creating a subscription product

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To create a subscription product:

1. Go to WooCommerce > Products > Add new
2. Select Simple Subscription as the product type.
3. Set the terms for the subscription, including price, billing interval, billing period, length, sign-up fee, and trial period (length, sign-up fee, and trial period are all optional).
4. Add any other product details you require, as instructed by Managing Products.
5. Click Publish.

Your store now has a subscription product available that customers can subscribe to using WooPayments.

Once purchased, future recurring payments on the associated subscription will be processed automatically with renewal orders generated in your store for you to track and manage. You can also manage the subscriptions via the WooCommerce > Subscriptions administration dashboard.

Subscription settings

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When you enable subscriptions with WooPayments, you can find the settings under WooCommerce > Settings > Subscriptions.

Descriptions of each setting can be found in our Store Manager guide.

Viewing transactions linked to a subscription

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To view all transactions for a particular subscription:

1. Go to WooCommerce > Subscriptions.
2. Click the subscription ID number for the particular subscription you’re interested in.
   • This will open the Edit Subscription page for that particular subscription.

3. At the bottom of the page, the Related Orders section contains all orders associated with that subscription.

Payment method changes

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If needed, store owners can change the payment method used to pay for subscriptions order from the WooCommerce dashboard. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Go to WooCommerce > Subscriptions.
2. Click the subscription ID number for the particular subscription you’re interested in.
   • This will open the Edit Subscription page for that particular subscription.

3. Click the pencil icon in the Billing section at the top.

4. Scroll down to the bottom of the billing info form, to the Saved Payment Method dropdown.
5. Click the dropdown menu and select a new payment method, if one is available.

6. Click the Update button to update the subscription to use the new payment method.

Disabling subscriptions

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If you need to manually disable the built-in subscriptions functionality:

1. Go to Payments > Settings in your WordPress dashboard.
2. Select Advanced settings at the bottom of the screen.
3. Select Enable Subscriptions with WooPayments to uncheck the box.
4. Click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.

Any subscription products that still exist when you deactivate this setting will be converted to simple products at their pre-existing price.

Tracking fees

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On subscription-related transactions via the subscription functionality built-in to WooPayments, an additional fee is charged. This fee is included on transactions for the initial sale of a subscription product and the future recurring payments associated with the subscription.

On the timeline of subscription-related transactions, visible under Payments > Transactions > Payment details screen, this fee will be displayed as a separate line item on the charge:

Extension compatibility

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The WooCommerce.com marketplace offers many extensions that add features to the core Woo Subscriptions extension. Many of these extensions can work with the subscriptions feature of WooPayments as well. Please see this document for more information.

Subscriptions with Indian cards

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Due to Reserve Bank of India regulations around how payment processors can charge cards issued by banks in India, paying for subscriptions with an Indian card may present some issues for your customers. These are explained below.

Subscriptions created before version 5.2.0

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Customers who initiate subscriptions while the merchant’s site is running WooPayments 5.1.2 or prior will have all of their automatic renewals fail. Specifically, the initial purchase will work, but all renewals after that will fail with transaction_not_allowed.

At that point, the customer will get an email alerting them that their renewal has failed. They will need to log into the merchant website and pay for the order manually, at which point the subscription will resume (until the next renewal, when it will fail again).

Subscriptions created after version 5.2.0

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Customers who initiate subscriptions while the merchant’s site is running WooPayments 5.2.0 or later will have a much better experience. The initial purchase will be subject to 3DS, but after that, renewals happen automatically and without customer interaction.

There is one exception: renewals that exceed 15,000 Indian rupees (INR) will require an additional manual verification process via the customer’s bank.

Also, please note that payment method updates on these subscriptions will not work yet, although a fix for that is in development by our engineering team.

Updating existing subscriptions

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If you have subscriptions on your site created with a WooPayments version prior to 5.2.0, and wish to allow your customers to get the newer, more convenient automatic renewals, the best method for doing that is to simply cancel their existing subscriptions when their existing term is over, and then advise the customers to start a fresh subscription.

It’s likely best to communicate this plan to your customers ahead of time though, as cancelling their subscriptions will send them an automated email, which could cause confusion if they see it with no advance warning.

Migrating

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If you are already using one subscription offering and want to migrate to the other option, please refer to our guides here:

• Moving from Woo Subscriptions to WooPayments
• Moving from WooPayments to Woo Subscriptions