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Overview
Billing

Set up a subscription with Bacs Direct Debit

Learn how to create and charge for a subscription with Bacs Direct Debit.

Use this guide to set up a subscription using Bacs Direct Debit as a payment method and Checkout.

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
# Available as a gem
sudo gem install stripe
Gemfile
# 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 GBP/month, and 90 GBP/year. This allows you to change and add prices without needing to change the details of your underlying products. You can 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 are in test mode by toggling the View test data button at the bottom of the Stripe Dashboard. Next, define the goods and services you plan to sell. To create a new product and price:

  • Navigate 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 test mode 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 test mode. 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 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 https://api.stripe.com/v1/checkout/sessions \
  -u 
sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc
: \
  -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 are 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.

From the Dashboard, enable the payment methods you want to accept from your customers. Checkout supports several payment methods.

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

When your customer completes a payment, Stripe redirects them to the URL that you specified in the success_url parameter. Typically, this is a page on your website that informs your customer that their payment was successful.

However, Bacs Direct Debit is a delayed notification payment method, which means that funds aren’t immediately available. A Bacs Direct Debit payment typically takes three business days to make the funds available. Because of this, you’ll want to delay order fulfillment until the funds are available. After the payment succeeds, the underlying PaymentIntent status changes from processing to succeeded.

You can confirm the payment is successful in several ways:

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

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.

Test the integration

There are several test bank account numbers you can use in test mode to make sure this integration is ready.

Sort code Account numberDescription
10-88-0000012345The payment succeeds and the Invoice transitions to paid.
10-88-0090012345The payment succeeds after three minutes and the Invoice transitions to paid.
10-88-0033333335The payment fails with a debit_not_authorized failure code and the Invoice transitions to open. The Mandate becomes inactive and the PaymentMethod can not be used again.
10-88-0093333335The payment fails after three minutes with a debit_not_authorized failure code and the Invoice transitions to open. The Mandate becomes inactive and the PaymentMethod can not be used again.
10-88-0022222227The payment fails with an insufficient_funds failure code and the Invoice transitions to open. The Mandate remains active and the PaymentMethod can be used again.
10-88-0092222227The payment fails after three minutes with an insufficient_funds failure code and the Invoice transitions to open. The Mandate remains active and the PaymentMethod can be used again.
10-88-0055555559The payment succeeds after three minutes and the Invoice transitions to paid, but a dispute is immediately created.
10-88-0000033333Payment Method creation succeeds, but the Mandate is refused by the customer’s bank and immediately transitions to inactive.
10-88-0000044444The request to set up Bacs Direct Debit fails immediately due to an invalid account number and the customer is prompted to update their information before submitting. Payment details are not collected.

You can test using any of the account numbers provided above. However, because Bacs Direct Debit payments take several days to process, use the test account numbers that operate on a three-minute delay to better simulate the behavior of live payments.

Note

By default, Stripe automatically sends emails to the customer when payment details are initially collected and each time a debit will be made on their account. These notifications aren’t sent in testmode.

See also

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On this page
Set up Stripe
Create recurring products and prices
Create a Checkout Session
Confirm the payment is successful
Test the integration
See also
Products Used
Billing
Payments
Checkout