PayPal Next Payment Date

Question

Is there a way to set the next payment date on a PayPal recurring billing account through the API? I don't see anything in the RecurringModifyTransaction call that would let me set the next payment date.

Answer 1

If you are seeking to alter the recurring payments profile, you would use UpdateRecurringPaymentsProfile , which is similar in operation to CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile . The parameters of this call define the start date of the profile, as well as the frequency, etc.

As for directly controlling an individual payment in the profile and/or setting a billing cycle to happen out-of-schedule, this isn't available using the native API. Indeed, in most circumstances you do not get a greate deal of control over or information about individual profile transactions; either it worked or it did not and IPN will tell you that much. For the finer-grained control and reporting, I have always found it necessary to use the Paypal back end (unfortunately).

I am not aware of a native Paypal API operation titled "RecurringModifyTransaction" -- are you using some third-party library that offers this?

Documentation

• UpdateRecurringPaymentsProfile - https://cms.paypal.com/en/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=developer/e_howto_api_nvp_r_UpdateRecurringPaymentsProfile

Answer 2

Since it is a recurring payment it will have a specific period (DAY, WEEK, MONTH, YEAR) that will decide the next payment date. Logically, if you can set the next payment date for recurring payment, it will be a problem where customers can be charged daily instead of what they have signed up to.

What you can do is setting the start date of the subscription plan and in case you are using PayPal Smart Buttons with the PayPal API you can send the start date in the createSubscription like this:

paypal.Buttons({
            createSubscription: function(data, actions) {
                return actions.subscription.create({
                    'plan_id': 'planId',
                    'start_time': 'startTime'
                });
            }, ...