Allow users to cancel recurring upgrade from within their account when using PayPal as payment provider

[Mouth]

Re: https://xenforo.com/community/threa...upgrade-paypal-is-gateway.184779/post-1457241

PayPal API allows for subscriptions to be cancelled, ref https://developer.paypal.com/docs/api/subscriptions/v1/#subscriptions_cancel

 

[Mouth]

Members contacting me about how to cancel their Paypal subscription is probably the most common customer service situation I deal with on a regular basis. Allowing members to manage their own subscriptions would eliminate the hassle.

Yes, probably my most common customer service situation too. And XF makes it really challenging and time consuming to deal with too.

 

[digitalpoint]

One of these days I'm going to make an addon to do it. Thankfully, the subscription management is decoupled from the normal payment api (don't need to change how XenForo handles user upgrade payments), so it shouldn't be terribly difficult. I just haven't had the time yet (hopefully someone else beats me to it... haha).

 

[Ivancas]

One of these days I'm going to make an addon to do it.

I hope that day will arrive soon

 

[djbaxter]

I hope that day will arrive soon

One of these days I'm going to make an addon to do it. Thankfully, the subscription management is decoupled from the normal payment api (don't need to change how XenForo handles user upgrade payments), so it shouldn't be terribly difficult. I just haven't had the time yet (hopefully someone else beats me to it... haha).

Ditto that. That would be worth paying for.

 

[Joeychgo]

I agree. There needs to be a way to cancel a subscription on the site. The 'its on paypal' doesn't fly - partly because if a user uses a credit card without having a paypal acct then there is no way for them to cancel it on paypal.

From a user's perspective, the subscription originates on the forum, not paypal. It should be cancelled from there by the user.

 

[aydinov]

okay absol

 

[Myck]

One of these days I'm going to make an addon to do it. Thankfully, the subscription management is decoupled from the normal payment api (don't need to change how XenForo handles user upgrade payments), so it shouldn't be terribly difficult. I just haven't had the time yet (hopefully someone else beats me to it... haha).

I wonder, has this been fixed to date? Or have you created a plugin for this?

 

[digitalpoint]

I wonder, has this been fixed to date?

It has not.

Or have you created a plugin for this?

Kind of... I have a different PayPal payment handler that I use in-house. So technically, I have. But it's not for others, so effectively no.

 

[Myck]

It has not.


Kind of... I have a different PayPal payment handler that I use in-house. So technically, I have. But it's not for others, so effectively no.

It would be excellent if they put it up for sale, taking into account that XF has been ignoring these requests for years.

 

[Frode789]

This feature is very much needed....

 

[digitalpoint]

If XenForo switched to the PayPal REST API not only would it allow users to cancel subscriptions, it allows for some other useful things. For example you can have subscriptions that start with an upfront cost (or nothing upfront) with the subscription starting on a future date. One place this would be useful in stock XenForo is to allow users to change their subscription length. Rather than have to wait for a monthly subscription to end before resubscribing to a user upgrade, you could simply start a subscription now that starts on a future date. I've been playing with this feature for a project. For example this has a $399 up-front cost, and then an annual subscription that doesn't start until 2 years later.



You have so much more flexibility with the PayPal's REST APIs.

 

[beerForo]

Hoping it's in 2.3, the "website payments" pp function is very limited.

 

[Ivancas]

If XenForo switched to the PayPal REST API not only would it allow users to cancel subscriptions, it allows for some other useful things. For example you can have subscriptions that start with an upfront cost (or nothing upfront) with the subscription starting on a future date. One place this would be useful in stock XenForo is to allow users to change their subscription length. Rather than have to wait for a monthly subscription to end before resubscribing to a user upgrade, you could simply start a subscription now that starts on a future date. I've been playing with this feature for a project. For example this has a $399 up-front cost, and then an annual subscription that doesn't start until 2 years later.

View attachment 285746

You have so much more flexibility with the PayPal's REST APIs.

All depends on @Chris D

 

[Max Fridman]

If XenForo switched to the PayPal REST API not only would it allow users to cancel subscriptions, it allows for some other useful things. For example you can have subscriptions that start with an upfront cost (or nothing upfront) with the subscription starting on a future date. One place this would be useful in stock XenForo is to allow users to change their subscription length. Rather than have to wait for a monthly subscription to end before resubscribing to a user upgrade, you could simply start a subscription now that starts on a future date. I've been playing with this feature for a project. For example this has a $399 up-front cost, and then an annual subscription that doesn't start until 2 years later.

View attachment 285746

You have so much more flexibility with the PayPal's REST APIs.

This change is basically huge for improve user subscription which is the most popular monetization model nowadays.

Everyone with a bit of knowledge about it knows it. I don't understand why Xenforo still not supports the new PayPal API.

And is lagging so much behind. Probably because they are too long to implement or something like that. The benefits will be insane tho...so maybe one day.

 

[digitalpoint]

I suspect we'll see it at some point... The payment handler system is abstracted out enough that the only thing you need to do is create a new PayPal payment handler. The other payment systems (like Stripe) are doing stuff via API, so they have built support for it in the handler system.

It also solves the issues that come up with using IPN for payment notification (for example you can't change the IPN URL for a subscription, so if you do something like change your domain, you need to have users cancel their subscriptions and recreate them). Major headache. Now PayPal has a Webhook API that allows you to subscribe to certain events and you designate the webhook location (and it can be changed later if needed). One nice thing is the already existing payment_callback.php XenForo uses is sufficient for handling webhook notifications from PayPal's Webhook API (it doesn't need any code changes, nor do you need to have a special route for PayPal webhook notices).

 

[Paul]

There was me hoping that something would be added so that users could just add a figure of how much they would like to donate to the site... Cant do that yet - has to be one of the pre-setup amounts in AdminCP, and even then only once per "upgrade"....

 

[Mouth]

I suspect we'll see it at some point...

2.4 in 2026?

 

[AndrewSimm]

2.4 in 2026?

2027 at the earliest.

 

[Suzanne O]

I'm sensing that mouth hates xenforo deliberately hates it to look for replies he can rubbish.

 

[AndrewSimm]

I'm sensing that mouth hates xenforo deliberately hates it to look for replies he can rubbish.

His name is Mouth...

In all seriousness, subscriptions are a vital part of many forums. I disabled PayPal on my forum because of it. Payments are important and users are going to be weary of any add-on that attempts to bridge the gap. The problem is XF stop releasing annual updates so we have no method to predict on when the next will come.