How to set up Recurring Billing with PayPal
I get this question often from my clients so I thought I would post the steps I use when I want to set up monthly payment plans for my services. Please note: these instructions don’t cover inventory management or merchant account setup or advanced variables.
- Log into your account at PayPal
- Go to ‘Merchant Services’
- Under ‘Key Features’ click ‘Subscription & Recurring Payments’
Step 1
- enter Item Name
- enter Subscription ID (if you use PayPal’s inventory management feature)
- customize the button to your preferences
- you can choose to add a drop down list with product/service choices (no price choices).
- select button appearance or use a button of your own
- select language for button and checkout window
- choose either a buy now or subscribe button
- select the currency you want to collect payments in
- indicate the amount to be billed each billing period
- indicate the billing cycle – day/week/month/year
- indicate how many billing cycles should occur
- indicate if you would like to offer a trial subscription to your customer
- if yes, more options will appear and you will have to indicate the specifics of your trial period
- under merchant identifier, select plain text email address
Step 2
- set up inventory track (if you use PayPal’s inventory management feature)
Step 3
- specify if you need the customer’s address
- Specify URLs for cancel & success pages
- click ‘Create Button’
Now, you will get two sets of code. One for your website or webmaster and a link to use in email. EXCEPTION: If you opted to use the drop down list feature in the button customization area you will only receive HTML code for your website/blog and not the email link.
The code for your webmaster will generate a payment button that will communicate all the detail between your site and PayPal to complete a Recurring Payment Setup (First and continual stream of payments).
The email link you can use to send to a new client or customer so they don’t have to go to your website and locate the button. It works the same way as the button and will lead the customer to a payment window that will set them up for the payment intervals you specified in the above steps.
If you have any problems with this process as I’ve outlined it here, feel free to contact me.
cheap jordan shoes responds:
Posted: June 4th, 2009 at 5:20 pm →
I have been wanting to set up recurring billing on my paypal site for a while, so thanks for some motivational information. Very well explained, and hopefully I will have no trouble at all.
Melanie responds:
Posted: June 6th, 2009 at 10:27 am →
I’m glad you found the post then! If you do have problems with it, please let me know, won’t you?
homemade colon cleanse responds:
Posted: July 6th, 2009 at 1:57 am →
awesome ideas here. I was looking to set up a paypal recurring billing system on my site and this gave me some good insight to proceed.
Trent responds:
Posted: July 27th, 2009 at 1:46 am →
I am able to set up a recurring billing button just fine. But I need to have the price option drop down box. How can this be done?
Melanie responds:
Posted: July 27th, 2009 at 12:23 pm →
Hey Jean! Glad you found the info useful.
Hello Trent… The drop-down WITH price/option is only available with products, services or gift certificates but not with subscriptions/recurring payments. That would certainly be a nice option, wouldn’t it? Perhaps if enough people request it they will work it out!
Jeff Hunt responds:
Posted: July 29th, 2009 at 5:45 am →
I have a question. Your tutorial is very straight forward, and I like it a lot. But I am curious as to how do I make Paypal return to my website whether or not the monthly billing is successful. For example someone signs up for recurring billing and it goes on for 3 months, but on the 4th month it fails. I need paypal to respond back to my website when they’re payments actually fail.
Thanks,
Jeff