How to allow trial users to sign up without entering their credit card details?

Problem Statement

You want to know how to allow trial users to sign up without entering their credit card details.

Solution

Scope

What happens when the trial ends if the payment method is not updated?

Summary

There are two scenarios that you need to consider when your trial subscription ends without payment details

If the 'Allow customers to checkout without payment details' (Settings > Configure Chargebee > Checkout & Self Service Portal )is enabled for 'Plans with free trials', the user will be allowed to subscribe trial subscription without payment details and the 'Auto-collection' will be set to 'Off' by default.

1. Once the default Trial expiry reminder emails are enabled and sent as per your requirements, there will an 'Update Payment Method' button requesting the user to update the payment method for an uninterrupted subscription.

• If the payment method is added, the Auto-collection will be enabled automatically and the subscription status will be updated from 'In trial' to 'Active' status & Invoice status to 'Paid' status.
• If the payment method is not added, the Auto-collection will not be enabled but the subscription status will be updated from 'In trial' to 'Active' status & Invoice status will be marked as 'Payment due' status.

Checkout V3:

The latest version of the checkout pages supports sign-up without entering payment details when there are no 'immediate charges'. To enable this, navigate to Settings > Configure Chargebee > Checkout & Self Service Portal > Allow customers to checkout without payment details.

More on this here.

Note: This feature is applicable only for new subscriptions created through checkout. The total checkout value should be '0' or no immediate charges eg: a trial

Checkout Pages V2:

Sign-up without payment details is not directly supported on the earlier version of the checkout pages. However, you can set this up by building a form on your website to collect the customer's name and email address and create the trial subscription.

Attached is a sample sign up page with the code to create trial subscriptions without a credit card. Similarly, you can build your own form.

In the attachment, if you browse to "trial_signup > chargebee_js > signup.html", you will see a code similar to what I've pasted below.

The changes you need to make for this sample sign up form to work(indicated with arrows above) are:

1. Your Chargebee site name (only the sub-domain name).

2. A publishable API key. You can create one under Settings > Configure Chargebee > API keys > Add API Key.

3. Your trial plan ID. You will find this when you open your trial plan under "Product Catalog".

When creating a publishable API key, please ensure that you check the option "Use From Browser" as shown below:

And also select the option "Publishable API Key".