With PayPal subscribe button, does the recurring billing continue indefinitely unless cancelled?

Question

I have created a Subscribe button using PayPal Standard button html code as below. The subscription billing cycle is monthly. For example, a user signs up for a Silver subscription at $150 per month or a Gold subscription at $200 per month.

Question : Will the monthly billing amount be automatically charged to the user every month indefinitely till user cancels the subscription, OR there is a maximum number of times it will be automatically charged?

I could not find any documentation on this, so just wanted to be sure.

Subscribe button code

<form action="https://www.sandbox.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post" target="_top">
    <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_s-xclick">
    <input type="hidden" name="hosted_button_id" value="XE3412D6UV2A">
    <input type="hidden" name="return" value="http://localhost/loadsprocure/paymentcompleted.aspx" />
    <input type="hidden" name="custom" value="23V125,new,architect" />
    <table>
        <tr><td><input type="hidden" name="on0" value="Plan Options">Plan Options</td></tr>
        <tr>
            <td>
                <select name="os0">
                    <option value="Basic">Basic : $100.00 USD - monthly</option>
                    <option value="Silver">Silver : $150.00 USD - monthly</option>
                    <option value="Gold">Gold : $200.00 USD - monthly</option>
                </select>
            </td>
        </tr>
    </table>
    <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
    <input type="image" src="https://www.sandbox.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_subscribeCC_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
    <img alt="" border="0" src="https://www.sandbox.paypal.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
</form>

Answer 1

You can find more details here: https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/express-checkout/integration-guide/ECRecurringPayments/

In short:

When you support recurring payments for a buyer, you create a recurring payments profile. The profile contains information about the recurring payments, including details for an optional trial period and a regular payment period. Both periods contain information about the payment frequency and payment amounts, including shipping and tax, if applicable.

After creating a profile, PayPal automatically queues payments based on the billing start date, billing frequency, and billing amount. Payments reoccur until the profile expires, there are too many failed payments to continue, or you cancel the profile.

Answer 2

( NOTE : All screen shots of Notifications in this message are from sandbox environment of PayPal and not from live environment)

What I found was surprising. Even with a subscription button, you can end up creating a non-recurring payment if you use the code in my original post. But, if I added the code below, then it created a recurring profile Without this extra code, the subscription billing stops after the current payment which you can see from a screen shot of subscription notification at end of this post.

<input type="hidden" name="src" value="1"><!--creates a recurring payment-->

When I included above code and created a subscription, then I got the following notification which clearly states the next payment date and also mentions no stop date.

Notification for subscription with recurring payment

With the code that I have in my question post, the Subscribe button surprisingly creates a non-recurring billing. How I came to know about this was by looking at Notifications at https://developer.paypal.com/developer/notifications/ . Below is a screen shot of the notification for subscription created with original html code.

Notification for subscription with NON-recurring payment

The src variable is described in PayPal documemtation at https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/paypal-payments-standard/integration-guide/Appx_websitestandard_htmlvariables/ is as below.

src variable Documentation from PayPal