What happens when a PayPal subscription is cancelled or fails?

0
votes

I am thinking about using PayPal to take subscription payments for a website but have a question relating to the process of cancelling and failed payments.

Initial process:

  1. Click subscribe/buy now button
  2. Log into PayPal or enter card details
  3. Review, click confirm
  4. Completion page (with PDT)

3 months and 2 days later and the user logs into PayPal to cancel their subscription (within PayPal instead of using my website).

How is that process or information passed back to my website for cancelled or failed subscription? I haven't found anything in FAQ, Help or How to and Louise was useless. I hope that someone here can help me...

Manually, I assume we're expected to log in review History and update the website accordingly (every couple of days).

Many thanks, Simon

1
paypalpaypal-subscriptions

1 Answers

2
votes

You would set up an IPN listener in your PayPal Profile. Once a subscription or recurring payments is charged, skipped, suspended or cancelled, you'll receive an appropriate IPN message at your IPN listener URL.

For IPN sample code and documentation, take a look at https://www.paypal.com/ipn, and for the individual IPN variables, take a look at https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=developer/e_howto_html_IPNandPDTVariables