About recurring - Checkout documentation

The following section provides information about starting and processing cards recurring Payments using ZEN.COM checkout integration. ZEN.COM provides two types of recurring Payments:

Standard recurring Payments

Unscheduled Payments

Recurring Payments are a type of Payment that is made on a regular basis (in cycle). You can use recurring Payments to charge your Customers for a subscription, a membership, or any other type of Payment. It is planned in specific day (first day of the month) and with specific amount (all time this same).

Unscheduled Payments are similar to recurring, but they do not require a fixed amount or schedule. It can be done every time.

For both recurring and unscheduled Payments, the Customers card remains stored (cardToken), and Merchant can trigger Payments on-demand.

INFO

Both types of recurring Transactions (unscheduled and recurring) need to be trigger first time using ZEN.COM checkout - because in the next Transactions you must refer to the first Transaction of a given type. It will not going to work if you start with recurring type as first one (using checkout) and then you will try next one (using API) with unscheduled type. Both types need to have first Transaction using checkout because of tokenization and cards schemas restrictions.

Key features of this integration:

Charge attempt on Customer's card is made only upon Merchant’s request (ZEN.COM doesn’t know what the Payment schedule for the Customer is and doesn’t proceed to charge him automatically without any action on the Merchant side).

Merchant must initiate recurring Payment with a Customer using credit card via ZEN.COM checkout. In addition, first Transaction need to be in initiated in a special way, then ZEN.COM knows that it is recurring one (recurringData parameter/object).

Merchant must continue recurring Payment with a Customer using card token via API and in a special way, then ZEN.COM knows that it is recurring one or unscheduled (paymentSpecificData /type parameters).

It is important to mention that for recurring Payments Merchant needs to have Customer consent for future charging (Merchant need to keep the consent record on his end);

Merchant need to remember to send in the call correct type of Transaction - recurring or unscheduled.

From the Customer perspective full mechanism is working in the same way as subscription on popular services – Customer provides credit card details and agrees on future charging.

There are two ways initiating that Payment:

Using ZEN.COM API integration (via card method) – API integration use case is explained here.

Using ZEN.COM checkout integration – use case explain in this section.