4
votes

I'm currently integrating the paypal recurring payment process in my website (thanks to https://www.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_pdn_subscr_techview_outside) and, for the moment, it works.

But I have a simple question, and I don't find the answer on Internet. Let's say a user deletes his account on my website after 2 months. How can I cancel automatically his subscription ?

Thank you!

2

2 Answers

3
votes

It takes a bit of effort to find, but Paypal does publish a guide on subscriptions.

To cancel someone's subscription, you need to create a link to Paypal -- see page 171 of that reference. There doesn't appear to be an API which allows you to cancel their subscription for them: they need to click a link to Paypal and cancel the subscription themselves.

The guide actually says

Paste the code onto you webpage [sic] near text that explains how subscription cancellations work.

0
votes

Apparently it's possible to cancel recurring payments with the API. See:

Can you cancel a PayPal automatic payment via API? (Subscription created via Hosted button)

This is certainly more complex than the "unsubscribe" button that paypal gives you, but... it could actually work. The "unsubscribe" button requires that people's payments are coming from their PayPal account, which is not the case if they set up recurring payments on a credit card (without logging into PayPal.)