X-Cart:Recurring billing

X-Cart has 'Subscriptions' built-in module that allows setting up recurring billing. Below are some instructions how to use it.

You create a product, then define subscription details: - product price becomes a setup price that customer pays for the first time; - period of payment: annually/quarterly/monthly/weekly/custom; - fee for this period which will be charged regularly.

Recurring billing is designed as a PHP module that is scheduled as a task on 'cron' scheduler. In order to prevent unauthorized use of recurring billing script that can be called directly through a proper URL we implemented a protection via a secret key. I.e. a visitor who does not know the secret code fixed in your store will not be able to launch that script.

You can also view/modify pay dates and unsubscribe or disable existing subscriptions on 'Subscriptions' page in the admin back-end.

Subscriptions are paid via so-called "background" payment online service. Not all payment gateways support direct background connection, some of them redirect customers to their pages to enter credit card info and only certain of such payment gateways support recurring billing.

First of all you should have "Subscriptions" option enabled in "Modules" section in the admin back-end. Then go to "Payment methods" section and find "Subscription processor" select box where you can select a payment gateway you want to have subscriptions to go thru.

Subscriptions are processed manually by the shop administrator. You should go to the subscriptions page, search for a subscription and click 'charge' link. Thus subscription charges will be collected from the customer signed to the subscription. Invoices are automatically generated. If x-cart connects to the payment gateway successfully the payments go through.