Recurring payments
Swedbank Pay Payment Menu is compatible with the WooCommerce Subscriptions extension for handling of recurring payments.
Recurring payments are currently supported for card payments.
Requirements
To get started with recurring payments via Swedbank Pay in your WooCommerce store, you will need the following:
- The extension WooCommerce Subscriptions installed and configured.
Get started with subscriptions
- Create a simple subscription product. Set it to a daily renewal so that we can test the renewal process as well.
- Make a test purchase (either with a real account or a test account).
- Make sure that:
1. The subscription order is created in both Swedbank Pay and WooCommerce.
2. A Swedbank Pay reservation number is added to the order notes in WooCommerce.
3. A Swedbank Pay recurring token is added to the Subscription.
4. The subscription status is set to Active in WooCommerce.
- Wait 24 hours and check that the renewal order is created, a new reservation number from Swedbank Pay is added to the order notes in the renewal order and the subscription is set to Active again.
Don’t have time to wait for the renewal to be triggered?
There are couple of options to avoid waiting 24 hours for a renewal to be triggered.
The fastest way is the Process renewal action
- Navigate to the subscription (→ WooCommerce → Subscriptions) you want to test.
- In the right column you should see a box named Subscription actions.
Choose Process renewal and click Apply.
You can also change the date and time for Next payment in the subscription and set it to an earlier time than 24 hours if you don’t want to wait that long.
- Navigate to the subscription (→ WooCommerce → Subscriptions) you want to test.
- In the right column you should see a box named Billing Schedule.
- Click the date field of the Next Payment section. A calendar is now displayed where you can select todays date. The nearest time you can set the renewal to be triggered is 1 hour in the future.
- Wait 1 hour for the renewal to be triggered and then make sure the renewal and subscription behaves as explained in the Get started with subscriptions section.
Failed renewal orders
If a renewal order is denied in Swedbank Pay’s system, the subscription will be set to On hold. Information about the reason why the renewal failed will be added as an order note in the renewal order. Information about possible card problems and error codes can be found in this Swedbank Pay documentation.
Failed payment flow
If a renewal payment fails, the customer will receive an email with the following subject line Invoice for renewal order #… The content of this email looks like this:
By clicking the Pay now link, the customer is redirected to the checkout page to pay for the order and re-activate their subscription.
After the customer have finalized the purchase, the subscription is set to Active again and the Subscription notes will look similar to this:
In general failed renewal payments with a 4xx error code should be treated as a failed payment where the customer need to take action and click the Pay now link in the email to re-activate their subscription.
Change the recurring token
In some cases you might need to change or add the Swedbank Pay recurring token. This can be done by navigating to the specific subscription and clicking on the pen icon next to the Billing address data.
When you have changed the data in the input field, remember to click on the Update button in the top right meta box.
Update payment method from My account page
If the customer wants to change the payment method selected for the subscription, they can login to My account and then navigate to the subscription. From this view they can click the Change payment button.
- This will send the customer to the checkout page where Swedbank Pay is selected again as the payment method.
- By clicking on the Change payment method button the customer is redirected to a Pay for order page.
- Finally the customer is redirected back to the subscription page and can se a notice about the subscription payment method being updated.
Automatic Payments
WooCommerce Subscriptions offers two methods for accepting recurring payments:
- Automatic payments
- Manual payments
To understand the difference between the two methods, read Subscription Renewal Process before continuing.
Basic Features
| Subscription Suspension | ✔ |
| Subscription Cancellation | ✔ |
| Subscription Reactivation | ✔ |
Advanced Features
| Multiple Subscriptions | ✔ |
| Recurring total changes | ✔ |
| Payment date changes | ✔ |
| Customer payment method changes | ✔ |
| Store manager payment method changes | – |
Troubleshooting
No subscription is being created. When a customer signs up there is only a regular order created.
This is usually happening because a new customer account wasn’t created.
The most common reason for this is that the account settings described in the Requirement section isn’t configured correctly.
No renewals are triggered at all
This is usually because you are working in a staging/test environment. WooCommerce Subscriptions have a built-in feature that determine if your installation is a production site or a staging site. From the staging site no renewals are being triggered. Read more about how WooCommerce Subscriptions handle staging sites and migrations here.
When is a pending subscription created?
A pending subscription is created at the same time as when a pending order is created.
Why does the customer get redirected back to the checkout with an error when I offer a free trial?
If you offer Free trial with subscriptions and the customer keeps getting redirected back to the checkout, you could have enabled $0 Initial Checkout in the Subscription settings.
When this setting is enabled, the payment gateway’s process_payment will not be called, which is what we use to store the merchant reference to the Woo order.
Solution: Go to: WooCommerce → Settings → Subscriptions and uncheck $0 Initial Checkout to disable it.