How to Set Up Recurring Payments in WordPress

If you do any business online, you probably bill your users for your products or services. Good business practices are often about building lasting relationships, and this often means multiple or recurring purchases, each of which requires invoicing and collection. if you selling a service or a regular supply of goods This requires that you bill your buyers at any frequency (for example, a monthly subscription), as your business grows and gains more customers, you will find that billing takes more and more time and therefore you can be better used. . Setting up recurring payments in WordPress is a way to automate billing to your buyers and save you a lot of time and effort.

In this article, we will show you how to use a free plugin to set up recurring payments for goods or services you use to sell your WordPress website.

But first, let’s discuss some of the reasons why you should consider ways to accept recurring payments.

What Are the Benefits of Recurring Payments?

The main benefit of setting up your account to receive recurring payments is to save time. For example, instead of billing each of your buyers, users, or subscribers for each interval, you can automate this process and bill it monthly. Instead of personally handling each bill as it arrives, they can set up their account to pay you automatically. this way, a recurring payment setup saves time on both ends.

The online services that will benefit most from recurring payments are subscription services such as news sites and online magazines. Similarly, maintenance services such as building and garden maintenance businesses may choose to charge monthly rather than per job price. But even new media like podcasts and individual creators can benefit from a subscription model.

The more you automate, the more just reduce the hassle of doing business – your customers will appreciate it.

There are any number of premium options for you to set up recurring payments. We’ve chosen to show you a free way to do this – all you need is a PayPal account and a free plugin. One caveat: the PayPal account itself is free, but processing fee you are receiving money for goods and services.

How to Set Up Recurring Payments Using Free Plugin

Plugin of choice WordPress PayPal. Of course, the prerequisite for using this plugin is a PayPal account. After installing and activating the plugin, go to your plugin settings page by selecting . WP PayPal > Settings From the menu on the left side of your WordPress dashboard.

Once there, you will find several options of the plugin.

First, there Enable Test Mode checkbox. You can check this box if you want to run some tests using the PayPal sandbox functionality. This way you can check if your setup is working using a simulated transaction between a simulated buyer and a simulated seller.

Next up is your PayPal data. you need to enter PayPal Seller ID and yours PayPal Email so the plugin can be linked to your account.

Finally, there is the Currency Code. Default USDFor US Dollars of course, but you can use any. Currencies supported by PayPal.

When everything is ready, all you have to do is Save Changes.

Now, this plugin provides you with shortcodes for PayPal buttons that you can use. You can find these shortcodes and their parameters at: plugin’s WordPress.org page. If you want to set up a recurring payment, you want the subscription button shortcode. The default version of the shortcode is:

[wp_paypal button="subscribe" name="My product" a3="1.00" p3="https://qodeinteractive.com/magazine/wordpress-recurring-payments/1" t3="M" src="https://qodeinteractive.com/magazine/wordpress-recurring-payments/1"]

This shortcode will create a subscribe button for “My Product”. To configure this button, you need to change its shortcode. As it stands, a sale using this button means a recurring subscription for one month at the price of 1.00 in the currency you specify.

The a3 parameter defines the price. To change the price, simply enter an amount up to two decimal places instead. 1.00.

If you want this payment to be repeated, source parameter needs to be set oneas by default.

This t3 The parameter is the recurring time of the payment. You can set it as D for days, W for Weeks, m for months and Y for years.

This p3 parameter is the number of recurrence periods in which the payment is recurring. The allowable range of values ​​depends on: t3 parameter and for 1-90 daysfor 1-52 Weeksfor 1-24 months and for 1-5 years.

Detailed instructions The use of these parameters can be found on the developer’s website.

Now we will place this button on a page. Of course, you can place your shortcode wherever you want. First we will create a new page and plus tick to add a shortcode block.

We will then fill in the shortcode block by pasting the shortcode and then save our changes.

And our page is ready to accept paying subscribers.

by clicking Subscriber button will take you to PayPal payment (simulated in our case) where your users can review their chosen subscription.

Of course, you can customize the button in various ways.

For example, we strongly recommend that you change the “My Product” placeholder. To do this, your shortcode name parameter. Replace my product with whatever you want to call your subscription. You can create multiple subscription types this way, as each shortcode you use creates a different button. This way, for example, you can offer discounts by offering better deals to subscribers who subscribe for longer periods, or you can create a subscription for multiple products or services on the same page using a single plugin.

If you want the PayPal payment to open in a new tab, you can do so using aim adding a parameter target=_blank to your shortcode.

If you want to change the appearance of the button to better match the design or style of your website, you can do so by adding: button_image parameter of the shortcode. Simply paste button_image=”XXXXXX” In the brackets of the shortcode you will of course replace XXXXXX with the URL of your custom button image, taking care not to break any of the other parameters.

There are more parameters you can add to this shortcode that may be useful to you, but they are beyond the scope of this demonstration. The plugin’s developers have summarized them on the plugin’s WordPress.org page, and you can test them in PayPal’s simulated environment to make sure they work to your satisfaction.

As a result

As we’ve shown, setting up recurring payments in WordPress is easy and shouldn’t cost you a penny beyond transaction fees. If you run a subscription service or a paywall-protected service, you can automate billing and avoid annoying your buyers, subscribers, and/or tippers with repeated billing and payment requests. And setting everything up requires little or no shortcode parameter tuning and takes almost no time. If your business can take advantage of it, there’s no reason not to try it.