How to change the price of a PayPal auto-renew subscription

-- HikaShop version -- : 5.0.2
-- HikaSerial version -- : 4.0.2
-- Joomla version -- : 4.4.3
-- PHP version -- : 8.2

Hi,

we have about a thousand subscribers who have bought an annual subscription with us via the PayPal auto-renewal payment method.

However, we have changed the price of the annual subscription and we need to update their contracts on PayPal.

Per PayPal docs, this should be straightforward if I simply update the plan pricing on PayPal.

But the problem is that HikaSerial has not registered any plans with PayPal and my plans section on PayPal is empty, as you can see here:
prnt.sc/52n_Mt7TNvbj


This PayPal forum thread suggests a workaround using the API, but they say it would only work for recurring payments made with Express Checkout, and I am not sure what is HikaSerial using:
www.paypal-community.com/t5/PayPal-Payme...riptions/m-p/3144826

What steps can I take to update the price of a subscription for active subscribers?

Thanks,
Peter

Edit: correction, we have about 200 subscribers, not a thousand.

Hello,

HikaSubscription is not using that kind of "recurring" API where it requires to create the plan on the payment platform too.
Maybe one day, but that's a not in our plans since these API are sending the plan & subscriptions into the payment processor and not your store.

Thus, it's not possible to change the price of a subscription while it's on auto-renewal ; you need to cancel the auto renew and let the customer perform the renewal manually, with the new price.

Regards,

Thanks for the details.

There is a way for us to update the subscription price manually for each customer via PayPal interface, but I am not sure if this will create problem with HikaSerial? Screenshot: paste.pics/8c6d404175cc678710a7cb951f0f20e3

We are trying to avoid canceling the subscriptions because it creates a poor customer experience and will have a revenue impact.

Thanks

Hello,

Are you seeing the 200 subscriptions in that Paypal interface ?

Even if you would be able to change the recurring price, during the renewal HikaSubscription will reject the payment since the amount doesn't corresponds to the original order recurring price.
So, if you do have the ability to change that price, it would also need a modification in HikaShop to allow the renewal (and it would require some tests to be sure).

Regards,

Yes, we can find all 200 subscriptions in the PayPal interface.

What would we need to change on HikaSerial / HikaShop side in order to match the new subscription price after updating it on PayPal?

I am happy to do a test.

Thanks

Hello,

It requires to use the "onBeforeCreateRecurringSuborder" trigger to modify the recurring order during its creation.
Because you can to affect the final price to introduce your modification.
You must have a correct total price in your backend since it is the amount of money you received from the customer ; the paypal recurring plugin is checking that price to be sure that the customer is not trying to pay you a difference price.

Now, how you need to use that trigger is something else...
I don't know what is the price modification exactly, but you need to change the price only for specific products and for specific recurring price ; you should not apply the same reduction in one year !

Once you have a custom plugin to dynamically change the order total price and you can change the recurring prices in your paypal backend ; you'll have achieve the goal.

Regards,