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Accepting recurring payments with Stripe in the Donations app

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If you have selected Stripe as your payment processor and wish to accept recurring payments through the Donations app, you will first need to create a Product and a Price through the control panel in your Stripe account. These will be used to create a new Subscription in Stripe for the recurring donation. You will need at least one Product and one Price to process recurring donations through Stripe.

To do so:

  1. Login to Stripe
  2. Go to Product Catalog
  3. Click "Create product" button
  4. On the "Product information" page, for Name, enter a name for the product. We suggest something akin to "Online monthly donation".
  5. For Description, leave blank or enter text of your choose
  6. Under "Pricing"
    1. Make sure "Recurring" is selected
    2. For "Amount", enter "0.01"
    3. For "Billing period" choose "Monthly" or "Yearly"
  7. Click the "More pricing options"
    1. For "Pricing model", choose "Flat Rate"
    2. Leave everything else as-is
    3. Click "Next"
  8. Click "Add product" button
  9. On the subsequent view, locate and click the Product you just created
  10. In the product detail view under the Pricing section, click the 3 dots next to the Created Date. 
    1. Click "Copy price ID"
    2. Past this id into Soapbox Engage > Control Panel > Payment Processor Settings > Default Price Id
      1. This will start with "price_"

Recurring payments accepted through the Donations app will create a Customer in Stripe and a corresponding Subscription for that Customer.

While the Payment Processor Settings accepts a Default Plan, you may also enter a unique Plan for individual Donation app pages.

Ensuring Consistency in Payment Frequency between Soapbox and Stripe

It is important that the Price used by a Donation in Soapbox be set to the same payment frequency as the Recurring Payment Frequency field on the Donation form in Soapbox. In other words, if the Donation form has "Annual" selected as its Recurring Payment Frequency, the Stripe Price used by that form must be set to "Yearly". If the Donation form has "Monthly" selected, the Stripe Price used by the form must be set to "Monthly".

Receiving Notifications of Subsequent Payments in Soapbox

After this has been done, you can create a webhook endpoint in Stripe to ensure that it notifies Soapbox of successful recurring donation transactions.

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