Using Paypal for monthly payments

Just curious... have you tried Googling that?
Let me google that for you
I have 100s that pay me this way every month. Subscriptions are a beautiful thing!

if you are not doing recurring, you are losing out!!, because with recurring no matter where you are beach, movies, out and about, you get paid.

Its a great system to be involved with.

Paypal has a feature ready for that. Simply create a button and define its type as subscription button. More information are also available at the PayPal help pages.

Wish you all the best!

A PayPal invoice does require the customer to send any money. A PayPal invoice does NOT automatically deduct any money. If you look at the way other hosting companies work, they set up some kind of recurring charges that are automatically taken out of your credit card, bank or PayPal account.

Do NOT depend on PayPal invoices to get paid. I believe the best use for PayPal invoices is to tell a customer that he has X amount of days to reactivate his/her automatic payments because their payment failed for some reason.

If payment is not received then their service will be suspended.

To me an invoice is just a reminder that you owe money to some one. Not a reliable way to collect money.

Best regards,
Steve Yakim

So which is it? You want it to be automatic - or you want to send them an invoice each month?

You can send them an invoice via email, but there's nothing automatic (nor recurring) about that. It's a one-time charge and there is no requirement for the customer to honor that invoice w/ an automatic deduction from their account. You would then have to send them another invoice each month.

You can set them up for a "Subscription" or for "Pre-approved" payments, but in either case you need to set up a "button" with the necessary details of 1) the amount, 2) the frequency of payment, 3) who's to be paid (i.e. your paypal email), etc.

A Paypal "button" is really a hidden form and the "buy" button is really a form submit button.

With either the Subscription button or a Pre-approved payment request, the form mentioned above is submitted and the customer is taken to Paypal where he/she approves the arrangement. Surely you understand the necessity of that step.

Of these 2 "automatic" options, the subscription requires the least effort on your part, as the monthly transfer of funds from their account into your Paypal account is automatic. With pre-approved payments, you are still required to request the funds transfer every month... you just don't have to wait for the customer to approve the charge each time.

With either of these 2 options, the "button" only has to be created one time so that the user can accept the billing agreement.

Set up the subscription button in paypal and where it give you the button code just click on the tab that says email and you can just email the client a link. I use this instead of putting a button on a web page

you could always do it the easy way and use a cart like clickbank or jvzoo.

That way you just add in your product, set the re-occurring and your good to go.

I have set up monthly and annual plans. Monthly is not such a problem. They budget for it and it doesn't come as a surprise. The annual charges can be significant and a surprise. That's why I set up a list they are put on automatically. It thanks them for buying and sends them a reminder that their annual fee will be due one month and weekly before the new payment will process.

I've had one customer stop the sub, then restart the next month (skipping a month) and three thank me for the reminders. So far none have dropped it completely.

I know this is the "opposite" question - but is there a way to setup PayPal to make monthly payments to a subscription service ?

Yes, paypal recurring billing, I think you need a paypal business account.

If you mean it is your own business, then 100% paypal business account can do this for you.

Be advised, paypal will ban your account until you provide valid business credentials if you go that way.

Please thank me if this post was helpful.

Thanks Vallery - I'll check that out - great advice - I'll setup a business account!