Enable recurring payments

Enable recurring payments.

About recurring payments

Recurring payments allow you to debit your customer’s account with a fixed or variable amount on a regular basis for the recurring services. You can also use recurring payments for single debit transactions.

Some of the recurring payment examples include:

• Membership fees
• Subscription to a regular or varying service
• Registration within a shop to avoid reentering the payment data
• Trial period, which require an initial registration for a service later

You can accept recurring payments in the following two ways:

1. Accepting recurring payments without the customer being present during the transaction.
2. Saving a customer’s payment method and corresponding details only for the Accept payments with a payment page.

Supported payment methods

Currently, the following payment methods support recurring:

• Card
• Google Pay
• PayPal
• Unzer Direct Debit

Registering a credit card or Google Pay for recurring

To register credit card or Google Pay as a recurring payment, implement the following flow:

1. Create the Google Pay or credit card type as described in the specific payment method section.
2. Make an authorization or direct charge call and add the additionalTransactionData object with the recurrenceType set to scheduled, unscheduled, or oneclick to the request body.

For the initial authorize or direct charge, 3DS might be required and you need to redirect the customer to the redirectUrl to complete the 3DS process.

POST: {{domain}}/v1/payments/charges
 
{
  "amount" : "40",
  "currency" : "EUR",
  "returnUrl": "https://www.unzer.com/de/kassenloesungen/",
  "resources" : {
    "typeId" : "s-gop-12345""
  },
    "additionalTransactionData": {
        "card": {
          "recurrenceType": "scheduled"
      }
    } 
}

The same request and typeId is used for the subsequent charges. You can make the subsequent charges without any further customer interaction or input and the 3DS process will be skipped.

For general information on credit card payments see credit cards.

Registering PayPal

To register PayPal as a recurring payment, implement the following flow:

1. Create a payment type. In the response you can find an id which is the payment type ID.
2. Flag the created PayPal paymentType as recurring with the request.

POST https://api.unzer.com/v1/types/<paymentTypeId>/recurring 
{ 
"returnUrl" : "https://www.unzer.com" 
}

You can find the a redirectUrl in the response.
3. Redirect the customer to this URL so that the customer can acknowledge the recurring payments.

{
    "isSuccess": false,
    "isPending": true,
    "isError": false,
    "redirectUrl": "https://sbx-payment.heidelpay.com/v1/redirect/paypal/s-OVdejRPc1EC6",
    "message": {
        "code": "COR.000.200.000",
        "merchant": "Transaction pending",
        "customer": "Your payment is currently pending. Please contact us for more information."
    },
    "returnUrl": "https://www.unzer.com",
    "date": "2024-12-03 09:45:56",
    "resources": {
        "customerId": "",
        "metadataId": ""
    },
    "processing": {
        "uniqueId": "31HA07BC8101621ACB1299AA4FA226FA",
        "shortId": "5971.4555.6301",
        "traceId": "db9429819a5e3987fac68af2e2d0c012"
    }
}

4. After the end customer has acknowledged the recurring payments within their PayPal account sucessfully, and is redirected to your given returnUrl of step 2, you can use this paymentType resource for future charges or authorization requests.

Note that if you want to use PayPal’s recurring or save payment data features as a merchant, you have to activate the PayPal Billing Agreements.

Example request: Accept recurring payments

To accept recurring payments, make a POST call to types/<paymentId>/recurring, with a private key and the following parameters in the request body:

POST https://api.unzer.com/v1/types/<paymentId>/recurring

Body:
{
  "returnUrl" : "https://www.unzer.com"
}

{
    "isSuccess": false,
    "isPending": true,
    "isError": false,
    "redirectUrl": "https://api-payment.unzer.com/v1/redirect/3ds/s-I98KIK9alGzO",
    "message": {
        "code": "COR.000.200.000",
        "customer": "Transaction pending"
    },
    "returnUrl": "https://www.unzer.com",
    "date": "2019-03-07 11:42:47",
    "resources": {
        "customerId": "",
        "metadataId": ""
    },
    "processing": {
        "uniqueId": "31HA07BC8110C3EE06224EB9C3FC44C2",
        "shortId": "4158.8536.7528"
    }
}

Registering Unzer Direct Debit

To use the recurring feature for Unzer Direct Debit, implement the following flow:

1. Make a POST call to payments/charges.
2. After a successful charge, the Unzer Direct Debit resource is automatically set as recurring.