5

We're setting up a recurring payment with an initial amount specified. We want to give the subscriber pretty much immediate access to the content, but we only want to give the user access to the content if the initial payment is successful.

The PayPal documentation says that a recurring payments profile may take up to 24 hours to activate.

Does this mean that the initial payment may not come through for 24 hours? Does this mean we should not use this method of charging for the first period if we want to give the user immediate access to the content?

What is the best way forward?

franzo
  • 1,379
  • 1
  • 15
  • 30

2 Answers2

2

Amount of the Optional Transaction. Required only when OPTIONALTRX=S.

OPTIONALTRX Defines an optional Authorization for validating the account information or for charging an initial fee. If this transaction fails, then the profile is not generated.Hope Your system check for whether the transaction is sucessfull

rosa mandez
  • 201
  • 1
  • 2
  • 7
-1

An initial amount would be charged right away and you would get a transaction ID back for this right away. The profile will come back as Active right away unless you specify otherwise. There's an option to immediately suspend the profile if the initial amount fails.

Drew Angell
  • 25,968
  • 5
  • 32
  • 51
  • When you say "right away", do you mean the 45 to 90 seconds it seems to take for the IPN? (And documented as being up to 24 hours.) People don't expect to wait an extra minute or so - it's a relatively long time for us to keep someone waiting - we'd need to display a page saying something like "Please wait while PayPal processes your subscription request" while we wait for the IPN response. Is there a better way? – franzo Jul 29 '13 at 02:17
  • No, I mean right away, included in the CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile response. – Drew Angell Jul 29 '13 at 05:21
  • This is not the case. The profile comes back right away as PENDING, not ACTIVE. – franzo Aug 28 '13 at 00:46
  • That means you must have something unique going on. Are you including an INITAMT in your request? If you want to post a sample of your request here I'll take a look and see if I can reproduce the problem. I work with recurring payments all the time and unless you're doing something special they always come back as Active in the response. – Drew Angell Aug 28 '13 at 02:14
  • I'm having the same problem as the OP if your offer of help is still valid? REQUEST: USER=**, PWD=**, SIGNATURE=**, METHOD=CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile, VERSION=86, TOKEN=EC-0HP09884C37461525, PAYERID=NEYC9VPRVQT3S, INITAMT=19.95, FAILEDINITAMTACTION=CancelOnFailure, PROFILESTARTDATE=2014-03-04T18:28:21.817Z, DESC=Monthly Subscription, BILLINGPERIOD=Month, BILLINGFREQUENCY=1, AMT=19.95, CURRENCYCODE=EUR, MAXFAILEDPAYMENTS=1 Response: PROFILEID=I-3J1SG5W9XMCW, PROFILESTATUS=PendingProfile, TIMESTAMP=2014-03-04T18:28:22Z, CORRELATIONID=5d17a9a59ea42, ACK=Success, VERSION=86, BUILD=9915774 – Crashthatch Mar 04 '14 at 18:33
  • Not sure who voted this down, but what I said is entirely accurate. – Drew Angell Apr 28 '15 at 03:41
  • Trying to figure out what I am doing wrong. I also get profile pending on all the recurring payments, not active. – albattran May 02 '17 at 18:03