How to add payment methods in a subscription?

Problem Statement

You want to know how to add payment methods in a subscription.

Solution

This article covers:

Adding a payment method to a customer

Assigning subscription specific payment method

Primary & Back up payments

Adding a payment method to a customer:

A customer can add their payment method depending on the sign-up flow and the integration option you have with Chargebee.

Generally collected at the time of signup during the purchase, however, the payment method can also also be collected after the subscription/customer is created in Chargebee.

• Using Chargebee Checkout - if you are using our Checkout pages, the payment method can be collected during sign up.

• Trial Sign up without a card - if are running a free trial and do not wish to collect the payment details during sign up, you can collect the payment details by sending an email to the customer with the Update Payment or Pay Now link.

• Through API - if you have a custom sign up flow configured on your end and are creating subscriptions in Chargebee using our APIs, you could collect the payment details on your end and pass it to Chargebee using the Payment Sources APIs.

The payment method for a customer is stored under the Customer resource and you can view the details on the customer details page.

Note that a customer can also have more than one payment method and can be used as a backup or an alternative payment option. Here's more on that.

Support for multiple payment methods is available from our Rise Plan & above.

Assigning a payment method for a subscription

If a customer record has multiple payment methods, by default, the primary payment method is used by all the subscriptions for that customer.

You can also choose to assign a different payment method for each subscription. This can come in handy in cases where you have a subscription for a large amount(such as an annual subscription) which you prefer to pay via direct debit. And the second subscription for a smaller price which you would like to pay using your credit card.

To do this, scroll down to the subscriptions section on the Customer details page and click on the Change option for "Payment Method Details".

The same can also be done via APIs by updating the payment_source_id parameter for a subscription.