Integrating pre-exiting paypal subscriptions

[annib]

Hi,

We are moving our membership database to WP emember. We have pre-existing members with different payment methods, which is fine and everything is set up and ready to go. However, I am not sure how to deal with the pre-existing paypal subscriptions. For people who have paid with simple paypal transaction, I can just set the expiry date and they will be sent an email for renewal.
However, with people who have already paid with paypal subscription, how will WP emember know when their subscription doesn’t get renewed?

Thanks
Anni

[wzp]

We are moving our membership database to WP emember…

However, I am not sure how to deal with the pre-existing paypal subscriptions. For people who have paid with simple paypal transaction, I can just set the expiry date and they will be sent an email for renewal.
However, with people who have already paid with paypal subscription, how will WP emember know when their subscription doesn’t get renewed?

1. When PayPal creates a (recurring payment) subscription; a “payment agreement” is established between PayPal and the subscriber. YOU become a passive third party to the agreement.
    
2. Depending upon the payment terms, the payment agreement runs into perpetuity, until the subscription runs its course, or until “you or the subscriber” cancel the payment agreement.
    
3. Whenever PayPal tries to collect a recurring payment, or the payment agreement gets cancelled; PayPal sends an IPN message to the your site. This means that any pre eMember subscription IPN messages will be ignored, and not be processed.
    

Depending on whether or not the pre-existing PayPal subscription have fixed lengths, or “go on forever,” you have a few options; none of which are “transparent” to the subscriber. All options will require the manual creation of new membership accounts, with varying expiration dates.

For pre-existing subscriptions that go on “forever,” you must manually go into PayPal and release them from their payment agreements. You then set an expiration date for the manually created accounts that includes some kind of “grace period,” in which they must resubscribe.

For pre-existing subscriptions that have a fixed term, you may be tempted to simply set the manually created accounts to expire at the same time. The problem is that, if a situation arises, in which a payment isn’t collected or the subscription otherwise gets cancelled, you won’t know about it; because eMember will ignore the IPN intended for your old system. You need to do a variation of the last option; in which you do a mass-cancellation of the old subscriptions, and then set grace periods for the memberships you manually created.

Giving “re-signup” grace periods is called “good will” in business; and is sometimes tax deductible, depending on what country you’re in. Hope this helps.

[annib]

Many thanks for the detailed response. This makes sense and I will be able to make a plan on transferring everyone now.

Anni

[Author]

Posts