PayPal Presents the New Subscriptions Experience
PayPal has been a pioneer in helping merchants enable subscriptions for a decade. Based on feedback from merchants who want a one-stop solution for their subscriptions needs, we proudly present a new Subscriptions experience. The new and improved Subscriptions experience is part of the PayPal Commerce Platform.
Helping merchants grow their business
We designed PayPal Subscriptions for businesses ranging from micro-sellers, to large enterprises, to marketplaces and platforms. Subscriptions now features a self-service dashboard and easy-to-integrate REST APIs.
Our mission is to help merchants, marketplaces, and platforms build a great subscription experience so they can focus on adding value to their core business. Business owners can benefit from PayPal’s presence across over 200 countries and its over 300 million users.
New features in Subscriptions
We packed the new Subscriptions experience with powerful new features, including flexible pricing and a new dashboard. Check out the details about each new feature below.
Product and plan catalog
Merchants can create a catalog of products and services they offer and present subscription plans for those products and services.
Flexible pricing models to suit (almost) every business
We made our pricing models flexible in so many ways that we needed a list.
- Subscription price update: Merchants can update the subscription plan price with no limitation. This provides flexibility to the merchant to charge subscribers at a revised price as business needs evolve.
- Quantity-based pricing: We introduced quantity-based pricing for subscriptions. Now customers can choose product quantity while they sign up for subscriptions.
- Volume and tiered-based pricing: We introduced two new pricing models to give more flexibility to merchants: volume-based and tiered-based. Merchants can define tiers (ranges of product units), and assign a different price for each tier.
- Trial and discounted cycles offered: Merchants can set a different price for each billing cycle of a subscription. Merchants can use this feature to configure free trials and discounted cycles for subscribers.
- One-time setup fees: Merchants can define a one-time setup or configuration fee to charge subscribers.
- Customized subscriptions: Merchants can offer customized prices to subscribers. This helps merchants provide discounts to specific users.
- Tax rates: Merchants can define tax rates for subscriptions as per the tax obligation for respective products or services.
- Usage or metered billing (coming soon): Merchants can bill based on subscriber use.
Full payment stack support
Merchants can offer multiple payment methods to customers for subscription sign-up. Customers can pay by PayPal, credit or debit card, or, in select markets, with their bank account.
Webhook communication
The merchant will receive webhook notifications for all product, plan, and subscription lifecycle operations.
Dunning management
- We introduced an intelligent retry framework to reduce payment failures. This helps improve the payment conversion rate.
- We introduced appropriate payment reminders and notifications to customers.
New merchant dashboard experience
- PayPal subscriptions dashboard: We built a new merchant dashboard — an intuitive plug-and-play portal for merchants. Merchants can use the self-service dashboard to create and manage subscription plans. With this comprehensive dashboard, merchants can also manage end-to-end subscription lifecycle operations.
- Business highlights and insights: We made a new analytics and insights dashboard to track your overall business performance. Merchants can observe trends over several subscription KPIs to gain insights and make data-driven decisions.
Sell anywhere online with a link
Merchants can generate a link for their subscription services and share it anywhere they connect with their customers online. Customers can subscribe using the link on social profiles, emails, texts, messaging apps, and more, even if the merchant doesn’t have a website.
Help customers manage subscriptions on mobile or web
- We help your customers stay on top of their subscriptions through the PayPal app. It’s a one-stop hub for customers to track their subscriptions and spending patterns.
- Your customers can also log in to the PayPal website to view and manage their subscriptions.
- Subscribers can choose their plans or cancel their subscriptions.
No monthly fees, no onboarding fees, no vetting
- We don’t charge any onboarding or monthly fees. We only charge a per-transaction fee once the payment is processed.
- Merchants don’t need to go through any vetting process for onboarding. All merchants need is a PayPal business account to enable subscriptions.
Comprehensive API documentation
We have taken great care to keep intuitive resource names, fields and descriptions for the APIs. We restructured our integration guide and API documentation to simplify the integration steps for developers. We also provide PayPal developer community support for all your queries.
A commitment to legacy versions
The new Subscriptions experience doesn’t impact existing merchants, marketplaces, or platforms with legacy PayPal Subscriptions. We will continue to support all existing integrations and make priority bug fixes. However, the existing Subscriptions API will be deprecated and will not be available for new integrations.
We strongly recommend you upgrade to the new Subscriptions version for our new features. Merchants using legacy Subscriptions can upgrade seamlessly. No changes are needed to the existing integration.
Ready to set up the new Subscriptions experience?
You can set up Subscriptions through the merchant dashboard on paypal.com, through API integration, or if you’re a marketplace or platform, through a tailored experience for marketplaces and platforms.
Merchant Dashboard — Plug and Play Solution
Log in to the subscription dashboard and create a subscription plan.
a) Generate a PayPal Checkout Button (HTML/JS code) for the subscription plan and put it on your website to start accepting subscriptions.
b) You can also choose to generate a weblink for the subscription plan and enable subscriptions through social media or email.
Integrate our REST APIs
Merchants looking for more flexibility can integrate with our REST APIs. These intuitive APIs follow the highest maturity level. Check out our documentation for integrating a world-class Subscriptions experience:
Support for marketplaces and platforms
Marketplaces and platforms can also offer a seamless integration experience to their merchants. We have a tailored integration for marketplaces and platforms to fit their specific requirements.
Let us know what you think
At PayPal, we are committed to your success. We encourage you to try our new Subscriptions experience and share your feedback. It will help us continue to serve you better.
