In this Stripe Tutorial; I'll be showing you different ways how to set up Stripe Recurring payments. If you don't have a verified Stripe account yet, then read my previous article here: Open A Stripe Business Account | Fast and Easy Stripe Verified Account.
There are so many stripe payment methods that you can take advantage of and recurring payment is one of them.
I'll show you three (3) methods in this article;
- Method 1: Recurring payments with products;
- Method 2: Recurring Payments with Subscriptions;
- Method 3: Recurring payments with website plugins (WordPress & WooCommerce).
What is a Recurring Payment?
A recurring payment is a payment that is made on a regular schedule and is often paid automatically. Some companies offer a recurring payment option and stripe is one of the best payment gateways that can help you do just that on your website.
A recurring payment is a more convenient way for customers to purchase a product or service. They never have to remember to make a payment when it's time; everything will be processed automatically.
This type of payment option also saves time by reducing the manual activity of creating invoices over and over again.
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How To Set Up Recurring Payments in Stripe
Method 1. Recurring Payment with Products
This method involves you creating a product or service on your stripe dashboard, adding price to it, and setting it to recurring payment.
Step 1. Create a Product
- Click on ‘Products' on your Stripe dashboard.
- Stripe subscriptions are created within a product. To add a new product, hit ‘Add product'.
- Enter the name of your recurring product or subscription plan. For this Stripe tutorial for beginners, we'll use the name ‘Yearly Platinum Consulting/$399 p/m' (refer to the screengrab).
- Upload a product/service image.
- Add a product description if needed.
- Under ‘Pricing model', keep ‘Standard pricing' selected for this Stripe recurring tutorial. However, feel free to check out other pricing models like volume pricing, graduated pricing, and package pricing.
- Under ‘Price', keep ‘Recurring' selected.
- Enter a price in the field given and choose your currency.
- Select a billing period: weekly, monthly, every 6 months, yearly, custom billing cycle, etc. In this Stripe tutorial for beginners, we'll opt for a monthly billing period.
- Keep the ‘usage is metered' box unchecked to charge a flat monthly fee.
- Enter a price description for internal reference if necessary.
- To add more pricing plans for this product, click on ‘Add another price' (refer to the screengrab). We'll skip it for now.
Click on the ‘Save product' button (top-right corner).
Step 2: Create Stripe Payment Link
- Select ‘Create payment link' (Bottom right corner).
This is where you can create a payment link for each of your products.
Send the payment page link to your customers so that they can directly sign up and make the purchase.
You also have the option to add more products to this link.
On the payment page, you can:
- Tap on ‘Confirmation page' > select ‘Replace default with custom message' and replace the message. You can also check the preview on your right.
- Choose not to show the confirmation page at all, and instead redirect people to your website.
Hit ‘Create link' and copy the link on the Stripe dashboard.
Step 3: Add Stripe Subscription Plan.
- Navigate over to ‘Customers'.
- Select the customer you wish to offer a subscription.
- Locate ‘Subscriptions' and hit ‘Create'.
- Under ‘Product', choose your subscription plan from the dropdown.
- Under ‘Subscription schedule', choose the start and end date of the billing cycle.
- You can also click on ‘Forever' and choose '12 cycles' since this is a yearly subscription plan.
- You need not choose the end date for your plan, and it will continue forever until you or your customer decide to end the subscription.
- Scroll down to ‘Payment method'.
- Choose ‘Email invoice to the customer to pay manually' if the customer's payment method is not on file.
- Select the ‘Invoice payment page' checkbox.
- You can manage payment methods, add a memo, and set up advance options like adding an invoice footer. The footer can include the terms & conditions of your service.
- Hit ‘Start subscription' (top-right corner).
Congratulations, you have successfully created a recurring payment with stripe using the product method.
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Method 2. Recurring Payment with Subscriptions
- Keep the Payments tab selected.
- Tap on ‘Subscriptions' on the left.
- Click on ‘Create subscription'.
- Add the customer.
- Choose your subscription plan.
- Set up your subscription schedule.
- Select the email invoice option.
- Add memo and check out additional options like adding a footer as explained earlier.
- Click on ‘Start subscription' (top-right corner).
READ ALSO: How To Set up Payment Gateways on Your Website
Method 3: Stripe Recurring Payments on WordPress/WooCommerce
If you own a WordPress or WooCommerce website, then this option is best for you. Just follow me step by step to set up stripe recurring payments on your website.
Note: In order to accept Stripe payments on your site, Stripe requires your site to be using SSL/HTTPS encryption. Don't worry if you don't have an SSL certificate yet! All that you need to do is to follow this step-by-step guide on how to add SSL in WordPress.
There are so many plugins that can help you set up stripe recurring payments on your website, especially if you are using WooCommerce. I'll write a separate article on how to set up recurring payments on WooCommerce in my next article.
For now, I'll show you the general method of doing it on WordPress.
Step 1. Install and Activate the “WP Simple Pay” plugin.
After purchasing the WP Simple Pay plugin, download it from your purchase email receipt or from your WP Simple Pay account.
Alternative Stripe Recurring Payments Plugins Include:
To install the plugin, go to your WordPress backend, navigate to Add New under Plugins, and then Upload Plugin. Click Choose File and find the WP Simple Pay .zip file on your computer. Click Install Now.
When the upload is complete, press the Activate Plugin button.
Once you activated the plugin, you'll be directed to the setup wizard. The setup wizard makes it easy to set up a Stripe account and connect it to your site. In the setup wizard, click Let's Get Started.
If you didn't see the setup wizard, simply head over to WP Simple Pay » Settings and then click on the Stripe tab where you can find the Connect with Stripe button. Just click on it to connect your Stripe account to your site.
Step 2: Connect WordPress to Stripe
In this step, you'll be asked to create a new Stripe account or connect an existing account. Click Connect with Stripe.
Click on the “Connect with Stripe” button to connect your stripe account. You will be taken to the stripe login page where you will have to login to your stripe account and accept the connection to your website.
Once this is done, you will be redirected back to your website.
If you do not have a stripe account, then read this article: Open A Stripe Business Account | Fast and Easy Stripe Verified Account.
Upon completing this process, you'll be shown a success page that says Setup Complete. The next thing you'll need to do is to start creating a subscription payment form.
Click on the button Create a Payment Form.
Step 3: Create a Recurring Payment Form
Now that you've connected your site to Stripe, let's start creating a payment form.
There are several different templates that let you accept payments, so you don't always have to start a payment form from scratch. If you're not on this page yet, you can navigate to WP Simple Pay » Add New to create a payment form.
Since there are too many templates, let's filter out all templates except for subscriptions by clicking on Subscriptions filter on the left-hand side.
While you can choose any of those templates, for the sake of this article, let's choose Donation Form with Recurring Option.
Step 4: Configure the Form to Accept Recurring Payments
After selecting your preferred Subscription template, you'll be directed to the configuration page, where you can choose different configuration settings.
In the General tab, you can change the title, description, and form type based on your needs.
To customize the payment success page, choose either Specific Page by which you can redirect users to one of your existing pages on your site after completing the payment. Or choose Redirect URL, if you want to redirect users to a third-party URL.
Next, click on the Payment option from the left, and you'll be able to customize the currency, and amount, and even choose between one-time and subscription payments.
When you click one of the amounts, you can see that the checkbox Allow price to optionally be purchased as a subscription is selected. With this option selected, your customers can make payments either in one-time or as a subscription.
Alternatively, if you only want to accept recurring payments and disallow one-time payments, you can toggle on the button Subscription, instead of One time.
Feel free to change the billing period as you wish.
You can even customize how the subscription is managed by navigating to WP Simple Pay » Settings and then clicking on the Subscription Management tab in your WordPress dashboard.
Don't forget to publish your form when you're done.
Step 5: Add the Recurring Form to a Page
Once you're ready, your final step is to put it on a page.
Navigate to an existing WordPress page/post or create a new one. Then click on the + icon to add the WP Simple Pay block. Then choose a form you just created. And then, click Publish or Update.
And that's it. I believe this guide helped you learn how to accept stripe recurring payments in WordPress. Over to you now, apply what you've learned in this article and grow your business. Start accepting recurring payments.
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3 comments
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Wonderfil and edifying
Thanks for the explanation.
Very detailed article.
Thank you so much, it was veryhelpful