Integration Guide

Handling Recurring Payments
Billing the Outstanding Amount of a Profile
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100 October 2009 Express Checkout Integration Guide
The profile changes take effect with the next payment after the call to update the profile. Say,
for example, the buyer has made one trial payment out of a total of three.
UpdateRecurringPaymentsProfile is called to increase the number of billing cycles to
five. As a result, the buyer will have four additional trial payments to make. If the call to
UpdateRecurringPaymentsProfile is made during the regular payment period, the
changes take effect with the buyer’s next scheduled regular payment.
For complete details, see the Name-Value Pair Developer Guide and Reference or the SOAP
API Reference.
Updating Addresses
When you update the subscriber shipping address, you must enter all of address fields, not just
those that are changing:
For example, if you want to update the subscriber’s street address, you must specify all of the
address fields listed in the Name-Value Pair Developer Guide and Reference or SOAP API
Reference, not just the field for the street address.
Updating the Billing Amount
For profiles created using Express Checkout, the total amount of a recurring payment can only
be increased 20% in a fixed 180-day interval after the profile is created. The 20% maximum is
based on the total amount of the profile at the beginning of the 180-day interval, including any
shipping or tax amount.
For example, if a profile is created on March 10 with a total amount of $100, then during the
180-day interval from March 10 to September 6, you can increase the payment amount to a
maximum of $120 (120% of $100).
Suppose that during the first 180-day interval, you increased the payment amount to $110.
Then during the next 180-day interval (starting on September 7 in this example), you can only
increase the amount of the payment to a maximum of $132 (120% of $110).
Billing the Outstanding Amount of a Profile
Use the BillOutstandingAmount API to immediately bill the buyer for the current past
due or outstanding amount for a recurring payments profile.
NOTE: You can also bill the buyer for the current past due or outstanding amount for a
recurring payments profile from the PayPal website.
To bill the outstanding amount:
z The profile status must be active or suspended.
NOTE: The BillOutstandingAmount API does not reactivate a suspended profile. You
need to call ManageRecurringProfileStatus to do this.