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Recurring plans

A recurring plan is a pre-defined reusable template that contains details of the goods or services you offer, the amount to be charged, and the frequency at which the consumer should be charged (i.e., billing cycle). Depending on your business requirement, you can create multiple plans with different billing frequencies and pricing.

The recurring plan serves as a foundation on which a recurring program is built.

Features

The following features help you create and customize your recurring plan. 

Recurring plan features
Feature Description
Plan type

You can choose which recurring business model you want to adopt for your plan. Currently, there are two plan types to choose from: Subscription and Auto Pay.

  • Subscription: If you have a business model where consumers pay you a fixed amount on a regular basis, this plan type is perfect for you. You can set a fixed pricing amount for all your consumers, while also having the flexibility to offer custom pricing amounts for specific consumers, if required.
  • Auto Pay: If you have a business model where you want to customize the pricing amount for each consumer at the time of enrollment, this plan type is perfect for you. You can achieve this by setting up a zero dollar Autopay plan and use them with custom pricing for different consumers.
Plan amount You can choose what price you want to charge your consumers for your plan. By passing the planAmount and currencyCode, you can set the pricing of the plan. This feature currently supports a flat pricing model, which is tax inclusive.
Billing frequency By setting the Billing Frequency Unit (days, weeks, months, and years) and Billing Frequency Count (1,2,3,4..), the billing frequency of the recurring plan is determined.

For example, if you want to set up a recurring plan where your consumer is charged once every month, then set billingFrequencyUnit = MONTHS and billingFrequencyCount =1. If you want to charge your consumer once every 7 weeks, then set billingFrequencyUnit = WEEKS and billingFrequencyCount=7.
Plan status

Allows you to choose the status of the recurring plan. You can immediately activate a plan or keep it in draft for future editing.

  • Draft: You can leverage this status to make any changes you want to a recurring plan before it's ready to be marketed. Feel free to edit all the fields of this plan any number of times.
  • Active: Once you have finalized the details of the plan, you can set it to Active and use it to enroll consumers.
  • Cancelled: You can cancel recurring plans that are no longer required using this status.

Keep in mind that a new recurring programs can't be created using draft or cancelled plans. However, existing recurring programs will continue to run even after the plan is cancelled.
Auto-renewable plans This feature gives you the flexibility to automatically renew the recurring program that was set using this recurring plan by setting autoRenewable = true. 

Keep in mind that recurring programs that have their auto-renewable plans cancelled will keep running and auto-renew, as per the schedule.
Default plans Defaulting a plan enables you to distinguish it from other plans. You can use this to mark your most popular plan and make it appear on top of the list on your website. You can have more than one default plan as well.
Custom merchant plan identifiers You can tag your custom plans with a unique identifier from your internal CRM, CMS, and ERP systems. if you don't choose a custom unique identifier, a system generated plan ID is assigned. 

Create a recurring plan

Once you decide what type of plan you want to create, the plan amount, and the billing frequency, you can create a recurring plan by sending a POST request to the /managedrecurringpayments/plans endpoint.

HTTP method: POST

Endpoint: /plans

Scenario: Create a new plan with monthly billing frequency.

Json
{
    "merchantPlanId": "Plan1234",
    "planName": "Silver Plan",
    "planType": "AUTOPAY",
    "planDescription": "Silver Plan Desc",
    "billingFrequencyCount": 3,
    "billingFrequencyUnit": "WEEKS",
    "planAmount": 1000,
    "currencyCode": "USD",
    "defaultPlan": true,
    "autoRenewable": false
}

Response:

Json
{
    "planId": "zBDsp2vXYL",
    "merchantId": "998152096533",
    "requestId": "81528923-2b48-4237-8f32-0b88208aa513",
    "merchantPlanId": "Plan1234",
    "planName": "Silver Plan",
    "planType": "AUTOPAY",
    "planDescription": "Silver Plan Desc",
    "billingFrequencyCount": "3",
    "billingFrequencyUnit": "WEEKS",
    "planAmount": "1000",
    "currencyCode": "USD",
    "defaultPlan": true,
    "autoRenewable": false,
    "planStatus": "ACTIVE",
    "statusChangeDate": "2024-07-01T10:32:23.377Z"
}

For information on how you can manage a recurring plan, refer to manage recurring plans.

Manage recurring plans

Recurring programs

Recurring payments