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Here I am with another Expresso Store question. My client just decided to sell memberships along other items (books), and this kind of item requires a recurring payment.

I know that Store doesn't handle recurring payments natively, but I know that it's possible to do it with PayPal, and PayPal is the only payment method my client is using. Obviously I would like to use the same Store cart and checkout form for selling both regular items and memberships. I was wondering if either:

  1. Someone else tried to integrate PayPal recurring payment with Store and if so which approach did you use?
  2. Would it be possible to also add subscription management functionality using Zoo Visitor (or some other add-on)?? Suggestions?
  3. There's some Store add-on around that does the trick - I've looked for it, but I could have missed it

Any suggestion about which kind approach I should choose would be much appreciated. I think this is a common problem and I'd like to share my solution for the benefit ot the community.

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As you mentioned Store does not currently support recurring payments with any of the gateways. It is a bit more complicated then just adding a gateway that allows recurring subscriptions to actually have them execute in Store.

Currently there isn't a way in Store to store the customers CC details or Payment Token that would allow the payment details to be kept so that they could be reused each payment. You would also need to add some mechanism that would recreate the cart or ordered items each month (or however often you want to bill) to increment orders and send out recipets. Depending on if your site members are able to access certain sections of your site or be in a separate member group you would need to build the functionality to check if the member has an active subscription and then act accordingly.

ZooVistor and similar add-ons for the most part just extend the default member module so they would require some custom development to add subscription management.

There isn't anything that I am aware of that extends Store to offer recurring payments.

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  • Hi Justin, thanks for the explanation, now I understand why this feature is not built into Store - or other ecommerce add-ons for EE for what it's worth. Anyway, I would really like to know if someone else has the same problems: honestly, a store that applies discounts to members who pay a recurring fee is not that weird.
    – kikaweb
    Commented Mar 22, 2013 at 14:54
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I know it's a late reply, but does this do what you're looking for? http://www.membrr.com/

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  • Hi @user1840204 and thanks for your suggestion, it's never too late! I had a look at Membrr after I posted my question, and it looked like a very interesting solution, but apparently it doesn't work when system folder is placed above the web root - see help.electricfunction.com/discussions/opengateway/… . I usually put the folder above the root for better security. I found that Simple Commerce Module can handle paypal recurring payments but then codes for discount have to be generated manually. And it only works with pay pal..
    – kikaweb
    Commented May 31, 2013 at 21:38
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I was modifying Store 1.6.x's PayPal Express gateway to initiate a subscription in one shot. But I was never able to really focus on it, it was on/off here and there over a few weeks earlier in the year so it was really hard to make progress. I was real close actually with the billing agreement working, subscription being made on paypal's end (test version at least)... but I still hadn't completed the order. We may have to upgrade to Store 2.x, I don't know how much that may throw off the progress I had made before, also we may just want to try to somehow integrate SCM with Store somehow. Not sure, haven't looked into it yet.

If you don't need a paypal sub to integrate tightly with Store (e.g. with payment management, reporting, newly created order, etc.) then it could be done. But I can't comment on managing the subscriptions.

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@notacouch ideally I would like to fully integrate paypal subscription with Store, but since this won't be one of Store's features, I tried to use at least Simple Commerce to manage subscriptions, but had a lot of problems with Paypal IPNs - see my other thread here. I also posted my question to the EE forum, but never had a reply.

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  • I'm working on rolling my own solution at the moment, picking up where I left off. For other people I'd probably recommend using CartThrob for recurring stuff. The thing with Store is that it has its own interface for orders already, I'm already using it with ZooVisitor, and even if I were to get CartThrob I'd have to take the time to get that up and running, too. Would probably make more sense in the long run to go the route of CartThrob but I think for me at the moment it might actually be faster for me to rewrite the PayPal Express merchant for subs. Dont know about sub management though.
    – notacouch
    Commented Nov 13, 2013 at 18:56
  • Also my past experiences with IPN were a nightmare. I remember working with SCM with EE 1.6.x and modifying the base to support multiple items in a single email template. Somewhere in between was a series of what now seem to be repressed memories courtesy PayPal. Full integration with Store would be hard because it's not set up for recurring payments at all. Would you create new orders/payments or change one? What about existing hooks for orders/payments? Not to mention how incredibly complicated recurring billing is in and of itself.
    – notacouch
    Commented Nov 13, 2013 at 19:06

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