Merchants use payment plans and subscriptions to take repeat payments from their customers.
A payment plan is a template that describes how a merchant takes payments from their customers. To add a customer to a payment plan and take repeat payments, the merchant uses a subscription.
A subscription contains information about the customer and a secure token that represents the customer’s payment details. The merchant assigns the subscription to the payment plan to start taking payments.
Each subscription inherits the details of the payment plan that the merchant assigns it to. However, the merchant can adjust each subscription to change the payments without affecting the payment plan that they assigned the subscription to. For example, a merchant can pause a subscription for the first month to offer a free trial period for a customer.
Notes:
- Merchants can offer more than one payment plan.
- Each payment plan can have more than one subscription.
- Each subscription can contain the details of only one customer.
Example
A merchant offers two payment plans: a recurring plan, and an installment plan. The recurring plan has no fixed end date, and the installment plan has a fixed number of payments. Each payment plan has two customers subscribed to it.
Mermaid source
flowchart TD
M["Merchant"]:::neutral
RP["Recurring plan"]:::green
IP["Installment plan"]:::green
C1["Customer 1 subscription"]:::neutral
C2["Customer 2 subscription"]:::neutral
C3["Customer 3 subscription"]:::neutral
C4["Customer 4 subscription"]:::neutral
M --> RP & IP
RP --> C1 & C2
IP --> C3 & C4
classDef green fill:#00E0B8,stroke:#001D4E,color:#001D4E
classDef neutral fill:#E5E5E5,stroke:#636363,color:#001D4E