Recurring payments

Recurring payments and direct debit for WordPress ecommerce, including donation flows where the amount is chosen by the customer.

Two different problems

A subscription with a fixed amount is a billing problem. A donation flow with a customer-chosen amount is a mandate and compliance problem. They are often built together and should not be.

Direct debit in the Dutch market

Automatic incasso via iDEAL is convenient and it carries obligations: a mandate reference, a pre-notification before each collection, and a straightforward way for the customer to cancel. Getting the pre-notification wrong produces chargebacks that cost more than the payments they claw back.

What the implementation needs

• A stored mandate with reference and date
• Pre-notification emails with the amount and collection date
• Retry handling for insufficient funds, with a defined retry policy
• Self-service cancellation that works without contacting support
• Reconciliation between the store, the provider and the ledger

Donation-specific considerations

Let the donor choose whether to cover transaction costs, make the recurring option explicit rather than pre-selected, and send a receipt that satisfies the rules for the jurisdiction. For charitable giving, the receipt is often the reason the second donation happens.