CODEWITHSUNDEEP
stripe-payments
puelo
puelo

Reputation: 5977

How to handle "incomplete" trial subscriptions

We are currently using Stripe to offer a subscription service with 30 days free trial. Since we don't want the customer to be able to start the free trial without authorizing one payment method we use the SetupIntent of the created Subscription to present a card input to our client. Now the issue is that even before the customer is shown the card input the subscription is already created and "paid" for because it is a free trial.

This means that we cannot listen to the initial invoice.paid Webhook to activate the account, but instead need to listen to setup_intent.succeeded. This seems a bit odd and requires us to link the SetupIntent to a Subscription. It also means that when a customer cancels the subscription process before entering their card details, that Stripe still has created an active Subscription in trial.

Is there something we can do differently, or should we just accept that the subscriptions where the SetupIntent was aborted will be inactive on the Stripe side once it tries to pay for the next (non-trial) invoices?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1700

Answers (1)

karbi
karbi

Reputation: 2163

Stripe's docs use the Setup Intent that's created with a trialing Subscription to collect a customer's Payment Method, but for your use case it may make more sense to create your own Setup Intent up front and not create the Subscription unless the Setup Intent it successful. It'd go something like this:

  1. Create the Setup Intent
  2. Confirm the Setup Intent after collecting details
  3. If successful, create the trialing Subscription

Alternatively, you could try using Checkout which does require users to submit a Payment Method even from trialing Subscriptions

Upvotes: 1

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