Subscriptions and recurring billing
Recurring collection on a mandate the customer confirmed, with dunning that retries on a published schedule and a cancellation that actually stops the money.
Anyone billing the same customers repeatedly: software, schools, gyms, insurance, service contracts, membership organisations.
Part of the platform itself: it is present wherever BitriPay runs.
The problem
A failed renewal usually ends a subscription that the customer intended to keep, and a cancellation that is hard to complete turns a lapsed customer into an angry one who tells people.
How it works
- The customer confirms a mandate; that confirmation is what the collection rests on.
- Invoices are raised on the plan’s schedule and collected from the wallet.
- A failed collection enters dunning and is retried on a published schedule.
- Cancellation stops the next collection — from the customer’s side, not only yours.
What you can check
Facts about the running platform rather than adjectives. Each one is visible in the product, the API reference or the ledger.
- Collection rests on a mandate the customer confirmed, not on a card number kept on file.
- A failed collection is retried on a published dunning schedule rather than being abandoned on the first failure.
- Subscription lifecycle events — created, cancelled, invoice paid, payment failed — are published, so your system knows without polling.
- Usage can be recorded against a subscription where a plan is metered rather than flat.
What it costs
Subscriptions carry the ordinary rate on the payments they collect. There is no separate charge for the schedule.
Questions
What happens when a payment fails?
It enters dunning and is retried on a published schedule. Most failed renewals are a temporary balance problem rather than a decision to leave, and abandoning on the first failure loses customers who wanted to stay.
How does a customer cancel?
From their own side, and it stops the next collection. Cancellation that requires contacting support, or a phone call during office hours, is a dark pattern — it buys one more month and costs the relationship.
Can I bill for usage rather than a flat amount?
Yes. Usage can be recorded against a subscription, so a metered plan invoices for what was actually used.
Read next
Payment links
A link you can paste into WhatsApp that behaves like a full checkout — reusable or single-use, with an expiry, a reference and a webhook when it is paid.
Signed webhooks
Deliveries you can verify two independent ways, replay yourself from the dashboard, and receive on a built-in inbox if you have nowhere to host an endpoint yet.
The gateway API
A payments API whose documentation is generated from the same table that serves the requests, so the reference can never describe an endpoint the platform does not have.