Paypal Subscriptions Changes

[JimJ]

Email from Paypal, can WHMCS edit the way it handles Paypal subs in time for this please?

 

Quote

We are always looking to evolve our customer experiences in order to provide the best products and solutions. To ensure that customers are receiving the latest capabilities, we continue to optimise our platform to provide the best experience to our consumers and merchants. To align with these goals and deliver on those capabilities, we’ll be making a change to a product we've identified that you may be using with your PayPal Payments Standard integration, subscriptions. This change means your integration will no longer provide the ability to modify an existing subscription. Please find an FAQs section below for any questions you may have. We appreciate your understanding with this upcoming change. If you have any additional questions, please Contact us. PayPal Merchant Services FAQs Q: When can I expect this change? A: This change will take place on 24 April. Q:  What changes do I need to make to my integration? A: If your button enables subscribers to sign up for new subscriptions, modify their current subscriptions or modify only their current subscriptions, you will need to update your button. Q: How do I update my button? A: You can find steps to creating a new subscription button in our Create a Subscribe button documentation. Q: Can I try this change first? A: Yes, you can follow the instructions in our Test your Payment Buttonsdocumentation to ensure your updated button will work as expected. Q: Is payment for the new subscription taken immediately? A: It depends on your subscription schedule or set up fee. Q: How is payment for the new subscription calculated? Is it a pro-rata'd payment or the full cost of the new subscription? A: It's the full cost

 

[lkitching]

We have also received the same email; having spoken to PayPal this morning it suggests that this mostly effects "modifying" PP subscriptions (eg, the amount of the subscription), which you can't do with WHMCS anyway.

Instead of uplifting subscription amounts (which you can do via PayPal, 30% at time) inline with price rises your business makes; customers now need to cancel their sub and re-sub for the new price as of 24th April. 

This is a huge annoyance if you plan on changing your pricing in future; which no-doubt every hosting company will do at some point; but I totally understand PayPal's reasoning for it. 

It would be good if WHMCS can get in touch with PayPal and find out how they can (as an automation system for the majority of the industry) make "uplifts" and the whole process easier on customers.

 

[brian!]

2 hours ago, JimJ said:

Email from Paypal, can WHMCS edit the way it handles Paypal subs in time for this please?

it might be worth opening a ticket with them to ensure that they know about this - it's possible that a WHMCS support staff might see this thread, but there are no guarantees.

I doubt there would be a maintenance release before that above date, so if their code requires changes, this might need to be released as a hotfix by WHMCS.

[WHMCS ChrisD]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for sharing this information with us.

Case #MODULE-7004 is open with our developers in order to have this reviewed for future releases. Whilst I cannot provide an estimated time for completion for this, once we resolve cases and push features they are available at our change log, here:

http://changelog.whmcs.com/

[WHMCS John]

Hi @JimJ,

Thanks for passing this announcement along.

Subscription modification is not currently a feature of the WHMCS PayPal module, so I can confirm that no code change is required in WHMCS as a result of this.

PayPal Billing Agreements is an alternative product which can provide more flexible billing options. There is a module for this in the Marketplace which may be of interest: https://marketplace.whmcs.com/product/330

[crazeegeek]

On 4/5/2019 at 10:43 AM, WHMCS John said:

Subscription modification is not currently a feature of the WHMCS PayPal module, so I can confirm that no code change is required in WHMCS as a result of this. 

 

I don't know if this is an issue across the board, but it is using an Owned License  install, currently v7.7.1.

Please provide a version of the PayPal module with the hidden input "modify",for the subscribe button, changed from 1 to 0.

- <input type="hidden" name="modify" value="1">
+ <input type="hidden" name="modify" value="0">

As long as the module continues to generate Subscribe buttons with modify enabled, clients are unable to create subscriptions.

[WHMCS John]

Hi @crazeegeek,

We've determined this could occur if the Modify Subscription feature was enabled before this feature was discontinued (only available in installations pre-2011).

As a workaround, please execute the following SQL query against your WHMCS database:

DELETE FROM tblpaymentgateways WHERE setting = 'modifysubscriptions' AND gateway = 'paypal';

 

Edited June 17, 2019 by WHMCS ChrisD
Replaced modifysubscription with modifysubscriptions

[JimJ]

It fixed mine, thanks John.

But by the way the my setting name was plural, so should be:

DELETE FROM tblpaymentgateways WHERE setting = 'modifysubscriptions' AND gateway = 'paypal';

 

Edited May 8, 2019 by JimJ
correction

[WHMCS Lawrence]

That's correct 🙂 thanks for pointing that out!

[KuJoe]

On 5/8/2019 at 4:53 PM, WHMCS John said:

We've determined this could occur if the Modify Subscription feature was enabled before this feature was discontinued (only available in installations pre-2011).

As a workaround, please execute the following SQL query against your WHMCS database:

DELETE FROM tblpaymentgateways WHERE setting = 'modifysubscriptions' AND gateway = 'paypal';

 

Can this be added to the PayPal page in the documents under the troubleshooting section? Thanks!