Recurring Billing:
We are evaluating payment gateway solution and narrowed down to Plimus and PayLeap. I understood most of plimus feature but having a tough time to relate to couple of scenarios.
1. We provide core/professional edition and offer monthly subscription. Our customers can upgrade or downgrade anytime. When customers upgrade, we can prorate the cost for the remaining days in a month and use override amount feature in plimus to charge for that particular amount. How does plimus know to charge this customer for a changed edition from next month on? If a customer was using core edition but changed to professional edition then how can plimus make sure this customer will be charged professional from next month on but not core. I want to know the same for Professional to core change.
2. How to let our customers change their credit card information during their subscription? We don't want to store this info. Does it have to be manual?
I appreciate explanation to the above questions. Otherwise, I like plimus.
Thanks
Jai
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When our subscription
When our subscription customers upgrade, we have a separate contract that is non-recurring and we send them the link to the "one-time upgrade payment" contract using the overridePrice=xx.xx parameter to set the cost as a variable (since it will differ with every upgrade. Even though it's a bit inconvenient for the customers who must re-enter their payment info for this one-time fee, it hasn't caused us any trouble yet. I guess you could modify their next charge amount to be the new charge amount + the prorated difference for the partial term but then you'd have to remember to change it back after that charge went through (at least that's my guess).
To switch the contract for the customer for future patyments, we (or the customer) can go into their Plimus account page and select a new contract for the upgraded subscription. It's a simple pull-down selection field on their contract info page. I think it's labelled "Switch to" if I remember correctly. If the customer does it, you'll get a vendor email notification of a contract change.
From what I've seen, a customer can't "modify" an existing credit card on their account, but must instead remove the existing card and add a new one. I'm not sure if this is a security issue or what, but when I logged in as a customer using the sandbox area, that's how it appeared to me. There wasn't an option to modify existing card info. It may have changed since then, but I think they can just remove the old card and add the new one.
Maybe someone from Plimus can chime in and correct me if I've gotten anything wrong. ;-)
correct
The customer can remove and then re-enter a credit card number (this is not possible for customers who purchases their subscriptions via PayPal).
To: ndmigration - upgrading/downgrading
If you check the "Charge On Switch (for recurring payments/Subscriptions)" option in the "general" section of the recurring contract-id, then customer will be charged straight away after switching subscriptions. If you leave this checkbox unchecked, then the customer will be charged the new price once their current subscription period reaches the next recurring payment.
Once a customer switches subscriptions they will be charged for the new price for their recurring payments.
You can also switch subscriptions via the order locator in your account.
Please make sure the recurring contracts are in the same product-id if you would like your customers to be able to switch between subscriptions.
In regards to updating credit card details, the customers can remove and re-enter their card if they need to update the credit card details.
If you have any further support queries, please contact our Vendor Support Team at vendors@plimus.com at anytime.
Recurring Billing - Customer Login
Thanks for all the replies. I have few final questions.
1. Is it mandatory for my customers to create username and password on Plimus order page (for recurring billing)? I'm feeling it's a bit inconvenient for my customers to log in 2 times (one on our application and again on the plimus order page to show billing information).
2. Is there anyway I can auto login (single signon) and prepopulate all billing information when my customers arrive on the plimus page?
Thanks
Jai
I'm pretty sure it's not
I'm pretty sure it's not mandatory to have them create a login, but you definitely want them to. If their card expires two months after they sign up and the transactions start failing, they'll need access to update their card info. You can't do it from your side and without a login, neither can they. You'd have to cancel their account and make them sign up again. That's much more inconvenient than having them remember a different password.
I'm not sure what you mean by "auto-login", but you may be able to pre-populate some of the order form fields by using URL parameters when you take them to the order page. I've used these parameters with our company to remove certain payment methods for certain contracts and it has worked well. It looks like you can control a lot more based on the following list of command line parameters:
https://secure.plimus.com/html/buynowParameters.html
Hope this helps,
-- Vinnie
Login
Vinnie is correct, you can post specific BuyNow parameters to your order page, however if the login option is selected in your account settings, the customer would still need to enter a password.
If you don't want your customers to enter a password, then you can enter the & tags in the email template of your products and once the order is approved, your customers will receive their login credentials in the confirmation email.