Paypal Subscriptions

Hi @fabeluna,

Thank you for reaching out with your inquiry.

In the latest official version, PayPal Payments implements support for subscriptions via Vaulting. Vaulting is an advanced feature that requires your PayPal merchant account to be enabled for Reference Transactions. You can read more about it in the documentation here: https://woocommerce.com/document/woocommerce-paypal-payments/#subscriptions-faq

But I’m happy to tell you that the team has been working on integrating the PayPal Subscriptions API directly into PayPal Payments for quite some time, and we expect this feature to be included in the next feature update around the middle or end of April. So a public test version will be available soon.

This integration will require the WooCommerce Subscriptions?plugin, but it will enable everyone to process recurring PayPal payments without needing to be enabled for Reference Transactions.

We’ll be able to share more details about it in the coming week or two, so stay tuned!

Kind regards,
Niklas

Hello Niklas,
thank you very much for this information, sounds great!
I have two further questions about this new feature:
1. Will it be possible to purchase a subscription product and a normal product at the same time, within one checkout process (without vaulting)?
Because I stumbled across this, I think the paypal subscription API is basically not designed for this specific needs?
2. Are you also planning to provide some developer docu for this implementation (opportunity to connect to this feature without the paypal subscription plugin)?
Best wishes, looking forward to this,
Leni

Hi Leni,

The Subscriptions API integration will be more limited compared to Vaulting due to the differences between how PayPal and WooCommerce work. But we can share more details about the specific limitations once the release is closer as these are not yet all decided.

The plugin documentation will thoroughly explain the feature after the release, and developers are always welcome to customize the plugin to their needs, e.g. with a custom module.
The integration of the Subscriptions API will still require the WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin because WooCommerce cannot handle recurring payment events by default.
We only support the WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin, but third-party developers are invited to add support for their own subscription plugins.

Kind regards,
Niklas

Hello Niklas,
can you can estimate?when the new update with the Paypal Subscription API will be released?
Thanks,
Leni

• This reply was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by fabeluna.

Hi @fabeluna

A pre-release version with support for PayPal Subscriptions is already available for testing here on GitHub: https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce-paypal-payments/releases

This feature is included in the upcoming update early next week as a “feature preview”. This means it is not yet fully developed and disabled by default, but you can enable it with a code snippet or a small plugin.

You can find instructions on how to activate and use the PayPal Subscriptions API feature in the wiki here: https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce-paypal-payments/wiki/Testing-features-previews

In the following update sometime in late June, we expect this feature to be available by default without having to explicitly activate it. By then it will also be polished a bit more. But in the current state it could already be used for testing the basic functionality.

Feedback is highly appreciated if you choose to give it a try in a staging site. Thanks!

Kind regards,
Niklas

Hello Niklas,
thank you very much for the pre-release version and instructions!
I have tested it and I am wondering if it will be possible to buy multiple subscriptions or a subscription with a normal product without vaulting? I have tested it according to your documentation and the paypal checkout process seems to only charge the first subscription in the card.
Thanks,
Leni

Hi @fabeluna,

Thanks for giving it a try.
At this time, mixed carts are not yet supported. This means currently, the cart can only consist of a singular PayPal subscription product.
The current integration and documentation are still incomplete, and the team is working on several improvements.

For example, the current feature preview in the 2.1.0-rc1 version does not hide the PayPal button/gateway for mixed carts. As you noted, this is a problem as the buyer would only pay for the subscription product and not the second product while it would be included in the WC order.

For the initial launch of this feature in the next month, the PayPal buttons/gateway will be hidden for mixed carts to work around this. But the team is looking into eventually supporting (certain) mixed carts and additional features.
Mixed carts may be possible to a certain degree, but some scenarios probably won’t work because the PayPal Subscriptions API is fairly restrictive in certain ways.

The 2.1.0 update with the feature preview is expected to be officially released today. But in the coming week, we can potentially provide a new test version with some UX improvements that more closely resemble what will be released in the following update. The document will be updated accordingly, and if you’re still interested, we’ll try to keep you in the loop.

Kind regards,
Niklas