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Overview
Billing
OverviewAbout the Billing APIs
Subscriptions
Tax
Overview
Reporting
OverviewReports for multiple accounts
Data
OverviewSchema

Set up a subscription with PayPal

Learn how to create and charge for a subscription with PayPal.

Use this guide to set up a subscription using PayPal and Checkout.

A Checkout Session represents the details of a customer’s intent to purchase. Create a Checkout Session when a customer wants to start a subscription. After redirecting a customer to a Checkout Session, Stripe presents a payment form where they can complete their purchase. After they complete a purchase, Stripe redirects them back to your site.

Enable PayPal recurring payments

Stripe automatically enables recurring payments for most users when they activate PayPal payments in the Stripe Dashboard. However, due to PayPal’s policies and regional restrictions, you might need to manually enable PayPal recurring payments in the Dashboard.

Set up Stripe
Server-side

First, you need a Stripe account. Register now.

Use our official libraries for access to the Stripe API from your application:

Command Line
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# Available as a gem
sudo gem install stripe
Gemfile
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# If you use bundler, you can add this line to your Gemfile
gem 'stripe'

Create recurring products and prices

Caution

The Prices API unifies how one-time purchases and subscriptions are modeled on Stripe. Existing integrations that don’t use the Prices API are still supported. However, some Checkout features only support Prices. See the migration guide to upgrade to the Prices API.

To use Checkout, you first need to create a Product and a Price. Different physical goods or levels of service must be represented by products. Each product’s pricing is represented by one or more prices.

For example, you can create a software product that has four prices: 10 USD/month, 100 USD/year, 9 eur/month, and 90 eur/year. This allows you to change and add prices without needing to change the details of your underlying products. You can either create a product and price through the API or through the Stripe Dashboard.

If your price is determined at checkout (for example, the customer sets a donation amount) or you prefer not to create prices upfront, you can create prices inline at Checkout Session creation.

Before you start configuring products, make sure you’re in a sandbox. Next, define the goods and services you plan to sell. To create a new product and price:

  • Go to the Products section in the Dashboard
  • Click Add product
  • Select “Recurring” when setting the price
  • Configure the pricing plan

You can define multiple pricing plans with different parameters for each recurring product. Each price has a generated ID that you can use as a reference during the checkout process.

Note

Products created in a sandbox can be copied to live mode so that you don’t need to re-create them. In the Product detail view in the Dashboard, click Copy to live mode on the upper right corner. You can only do this once for each product created in a sandbox. Subsequent updates to the test product are not reflected for the live product.

Create a Checkout Session
Client-side
Server-side

Add a checkout button to your website that calls a server-side endpoint to create a Checkout Session.

index.html
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Checkout</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <form action="/create-checkout-session" method="POST">
      <button type="submit">Checkout</button>
    </form>
  </body>
</html>

Create a Checkout Session with the ID of an existing Price. Make sure that mode is set to subscription and you pass at least one recurring price. You can add one-time prices in addition to recurring prices. After creating the Checkout Session, redirect your customer to the URL returned in the response.

Command Line
cURL
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curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/checkout/sessions \
  -u 
sk_test_BQokikJOvBiI2HlWgH4olfQ2
: \
  -d "payment_method_types[]"="paypal" \
  -d "line_items[][price]"=
{{PRICE_ID}}
 \
  -d "line_items[][quantity]"=1 \
  -d "mode"="subscription" \
  -d "success_url"="https://example.com/success?session_id={CHECKOUT_SESSION_ID}" \
  -d "cancel_url"="https://example.com/cancel" \

When your customer successfully completes their payment, they’re redirected to the success_url, a page on your website that informs the customer that their payment was successful. Make the Session ID available on your success page by including the {CHECKOUT_SESSION_ID} template variable in the success_url as in the above example.

When your customer clicks on your logo in a Checkout Session without completing a payment, Checkout redirects them back to your website by navigating to the cancel_url. Typically, this is the page on your website that the customer viewed prior to redirecting to Checkout.

Checkout Sessions expire 24 hours after creation by default.

Caution

Don’t rely on the redirect to the success_url alone for detecting payment initiation, as:

  • Malicious users could directly access the success_url without paying and gain access to your goods or services.
  • Customers may not always reach the success_url after a successful payment—they might close their browser tab before the redirect occurs.

Confirm the payment is successful

Note

When a buyer successfully confirms a subscription on Stripe with PayPal, they receive a receipt from Stripe as well as from PayPal.

When your customer completes a payment, they’re redirected to the URL that you specified as the success_url. This is typically a page on your website that informs your customer that their payment was successful.

Use the Dashboard, a custom webhook, or a third-party plugin to handle post-payment events like sending an order confirmation email to your customer, logging the sale in a database, or starting a shipping workflow.

Successful payments appear in the Dashboard’s list of payments. When you click a payment, it takes you to the Payment details page. The Checkout summary section contains billing information and the list of items purchased, which you can use to manually fulfill the order.

Checkout summary

Note

Stripe can help you keep up with incoming payments by sending you email notifications whenever a customer successfully completes one. Use the Dashboard to configure email notifications.

You can use plugins like Zapier to automate updating your purchase fulfillment systems with information from Stripe payments.

Some examples of automation supported by plugins include:

  • Updating spreadsheets used for order tracking in response to successful payments
  • Updating inventory management systems in response to successful payments
  • Triggering notifications to internal customer service teams using email or chat applications

Test the integration

Test your PayPal integration with your test API keys by viewing the redirect page. You can test the successful payment case by authenticating the payment on the redirect page. The PaymentIntent will transition from requires_action to succeeded.

To test the case where the user fails to authenticate, use your test API keys and view the redirect page. On the redirect page, click Fail test payment. The PaymentIntent will transition from requires_action to requires_payment_method.

OptionalAdding a one-time setup fee
Server-side

In addition to passing recurring prices, you can add one-time prices in subscription mode. These are only on the initial invoice created by the subscription. This is useful for adding setup fees or other one-time fees associated with a subscription.

Command Line
curl
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curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/checkout/sessions \
  -u 
sk_test_BQokikJOvBiI2HlWgH4olfQ2
: \
  -d "payment_method_types[]"="paypal" \
  -d "line_items[0][price]"="{{RECURRING_PRICE_ID}}" \
  -d "line_items[0][quantity]"=1 \
  -d "line_items[1][price]"="{{ONE_TIME_PRICE_ID}}" \
  -d "line_items[1][quantity]"=1 \
  -d "mode"="subscription" \
  -d "success_url"="https://example.com/success?session_id={CHECKOUT_SESSION_ID}" \
  -d "cancel_url"="https://example.com/cancel"

OptionalCreate prices and products inline
Server-side

In addition to passing in existing price IDs, you can also define your item price at Checkout session creation. First define a Product. Then create a Checkout session using the product ID, by passing it into price_data with the unit_amount, currency, and recurring details:

Command Line
curl
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curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/checkout/sessions \
  -u 
sk_test_BQokikJOvBiI2HlWgH4olfQ2
: \
  -d "payment_method_types[]"=paypal \
  -d line_items[0][price_data][unit_amount]=5000 \
  -d line_items[0][price_data][currency]=eur \
  -d line_items[0][price_data][product]=
{{PRODUCT_ID}}
 \
  -d line_items[0][price_data][recurring][interval]=month \
  -d line_items[0][quantity]=1 \
  -d mode=subscription \
  -d success_url="https://example.com/success?session_id={CHECKOUT_SESSION_ID}" \
  -d cancel_url="https://example.com/cancel"

If you also need to create products inline, you can do so with product_data:

Command Line
curl
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curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/checkout/sessions \
  -u 
sk_test_BQokikJOvBiI2HlWgH4olfQ2
: \
  -d "payment_method_types[]"=paypal \
  -d "line_items[][price_data][currency]"=eur \
  -d "line_items[][price_data][product_data][name]"=T-shirt \
  -d "line_items[][price_data][unit_amount]"=2000 \
  -d "line_items[][quantity]"=1 \
  -d "mode"="subscription" \
  -d success_url="https://example.com/success?session_id={CHECKOUT_SESSION_ID}" \
  -d cancel_url="https://example.com/cancel"

OptionalExisting customers
Server-side

If you have previously created a Customer object to represent a customer, use the customer argument to pass their Customer ID when creating a Checkout Session. This ensures that all objects created during the Session are associated with the correct Customer object.

When you pass a Customer ID, Stripe also uses the email stored on the Customer object to prefill the email field on the Checkout page. If the customer changes their email on the Checkout page, it will be updated on the Customer object after a successful payment.

Command Line
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curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/checkout/sessions \
  -u 
sk_test_BQokikJOvBiI2HlWgH4olfQ2
: \
  -d "customer"=
{{CUSTOMER_ID}}

  -d "payment_method_types[]"="paypal" \
  -d "line_items[][price]"=
{{PRICE_ID}}
 \
  -d "line_items[][quantity]"=1 \
  -d "mode"="subscription" \
  -d "success_url"="https://example.com/success" \
  -d "cancel_url"="https://example.com/cancel"

OptionalPrefill customer data
Server-side

If you’ve already collected your customer’s email and want to prefill it in the Checkout Session for them, pass customer_email when creating a Checkout Session.

Command Line
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curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/checkout/sessions \
  -u 
sk_test_BQokikJOvBiI2HlWgH4olfQ2
: \
  -d customer_email="customer@example.com" \
  -d "payment_method_types[]"=paypal \
  -d "line_items[][price]"=
{{PRICE_ID}}
 \
  -d "line_items[][quantity]"=1 \
  -d mode=subscription \
  -d success_url="https://example.com/success" \
  -d cancel_url="https://example.com/cancel"

OptionalHandling trials
Server-side

You can use trial_end or trial_period_days on the Checkout session to specify the duration of the trial period. In this example we use trial_period_days to create a Checkout session for a subscription with a 30 days trial.

Command Line
curl
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curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/checkout/sessions \
  -u 
sk_test_BQokikJOvBiI2HlWgH4olfQ2
: \
  -d "payment_method_types[]"=paypal \
  -d "line_items[][price]"=
{{PRICE_ID}}
 \
  -d "line_items[][quantity]"=1 \
  -d "subscription_data[trial_period_days]"=30 \
  -d mode=subscription \
  -d success_url="https://example.com/success?session_id={CHECKOUT_SESSION_ID}" \
  -d cancel_url="https://example.com/cancel"

Checkout displays the following information automatically for subscriptions with trials:

  • Trial period
  • Frequency and amount of charges after trial expiration

For more information on compliance requirements, visit the Billing or support guide.

OptionalTax rates
Server-side

You can specify tax rates (Sales, VAT, GST, and others) in Checkout Sessions to apply taxes to subscriptions.

  • Use fixed tax rates when you know the exact tax rate to charge your customers before they start the checkout process (for example, you only sell to customers in the UK and always charge 20% VAT).
  • With the Prices API, you can use dynamic tax rates when you require more information from your customer (for example, their billing or shipping address) before determining the tax rate to charge. With dynamic tax rates, you create tax rates for different regions (for example, a 20% VAT tax rate for customers in the UK and a 7.25% sales tax rate for customers in California, US) and Stripe attempts to match your customer’s location to one of those tax rates.

Set subscription_data.default_tax_rates to apply a default tax rate to a subscription started with Checkout.

Command Line
curl
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curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/checkout/sessions \
  -u 
sk_test_BQokikJOvBiI2HlWgH4olfQ2
: \
  -d "payment_method_types[]"=paypal \
  -d "line_items[][price]"=
{{PRICE_ID}}
 \
  -d "line_items[][quantity]"=1 \
  -d "subscription_data[default_tax_rates][]"="{{TAX_RATE_ID}}" \
  -d mode=subscription \
  -d success_url="https://example.com/success" \
  -d cancel_url="https://example.com/cancel"

You can also specify line_items.tax_rates or subscription_data.items.tax_rates to apply tax rates to specific plans or invoice line items.

Command Line
curl
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curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/checkout/sessions \
  -u 
sk_test_BQokikJOvBiI2HlWgH4olfQ2
: \
  -d "payment_method_types[]"="paypal" \
  -d "line_items[][price]"=
{{PRICE_ID}}
 \
  -d "line_items[][quantity]"=1 \
  -d "line_items[][tax_rates][0]"="{{TAX_RATE_ID}}" \
  -d "mode"="subscription" \
  -d "success_url"="https://example.com/success" \
  -d "cancel_url"="https://example.com/cancel"

You can use Stripe’s data exports to populate the periodic reports required for remittance. Visit Tax reporting and remittance for more information.

OptionalAdding coupons
Server-side

You can apply coupons to subscriptions in a Checkout Session by setting discounts. This coupon overrides any coupon on the customer. If you’re creating a subscription with an existing customer, any coupon associated with the customer is applied to the subscription’s invoices.

Command Line
curl
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curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/checkout/sessions \
  -u 
sk_test_BQokikJOvBiI2HlWgH4olfQ2
: \
  -d "payment_method_types[]"=paypal \
  -d "line_items[][price]"=
{{PRICE_ID}}
 \
  -d "line_items[][quantity]"=1 \
  -d "discounts[][coupon]"="{{COUPON_ID}}" \
  -d "mode"="subscription" \
  -d success_url="https://example.com/success" \
  -d cancel_url="https://example.com/cancel"

Adding customer-facing promotion codes

You can also enable user-redeemable Promotion Codes using the allow_promotion_codes parameter in Checkout Sessions. When allow_promotion_codes is enabled on a Checkout Session, Checkout includes a promotion code redemption box for your customers to use. Create your coupons and promotion codes through the Dashboard or API in order for your customers to redeem them in Checkout.

Command Line
curl
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curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/checkout/sessions \
  -u 
sk_test_BQokikJOvBiI2HlWgH4olfQ2
: \
  -d "payment_method_types[]"="paypal" \
  -d "line_items[0][price_data][unit_amount]"=2000 \
  -d "line_items[0][price_data][currency]"="eur" \
  -d "line_items[0][price_data][product]=
{{PRODUCT_ID}}
" \
  -d "line_items[0][price_data][recurring][interval]=month" \
  -d "line_items[0][quantity]"=1 \
  -d "allow_promotion_codes"="true" \
  -d "mode"="subscription" \
  -d "success_url"="https://example.com/success" \
  -d "cancel_url"="https://example.com/cancel"

See also

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