This document explains how browser extension subscriptions work on ExtensionPay.
To charge subscription payments for your extension, register your extension and choose the subscription payment option.
When users successfully pay for your extension they will see a screen that looks like this:
You can open this screen programmatically by running extpay.openPaymentPage() after the user has paid. You should allow the user to open this page from within your extension.
When a user successfully pays for a subscription, their subscriptionStatus from extpay.getUser() is set to active and user.paid is true.
At the end of their billing period (for example, 1 month later), their card will be automatically charged again. If the payment succeeds their user.subscriptionStatus will remain active.
If an automatic subscription payment fails (due to an expired card, insufficient funds, cosmic rays, etc), user.subscriptionStatus is set to past_due and user.paid is false.
In your Stripe billing settings you can define what happens after that. By default, Stripe will automatically attempt to charge the user's card a few more times before setting their subscriptionStatus to canceled.
Ideally, the customer would be notified in your extension and/or emailed by Stripe ("Send emails when card payments fail" option in the screenshot below) to update their card information when a payment fails.
Below is a screenshot of recommended Stripe settings for failed payments:
When a user cancels their subscription, it isn't canceled right away. Instead, user.subscriptionStatus remains active (and user.paid is true) through the end of the billing cycle.
However, user.subscriptionCancelAt is populated with the datetime their subscription will expire.
At the end of their billing cycle, user.subscriptionStatus will automatically switch to canceled and user.paid will be false. user.subscriptionCancelAt won't change.
Users who have canceled subscriptions cannot restart their subscriptions. They will have to create a new subscription by paying again.
Below is example code that handles all the states a user's subscription can enter.
const extpay = ExtPay('my-extension-id');
extpay.getUser().then(user => {
if (user.paid && !user.subscriptionCancelAt) {
console.log("You're paid!")
} else if (user.paid && user.subscriptionCancelAt) {
console.log("Your subscription will end at the next billing cycle")
} else if (user.subscriptionStatus === 'past_due') {
console.log("You need to update your card!");
extpay.openPaymentPage();
} else if (user.subscriptionStatus === 'canceled') {
console.log("We hope you enjoyed your subscription!")
} else {
console.log("You haven't paid yet :( ")
}
})Below is a screenshot of all the recommended Stripe settings for subscription payments in ExtensionPay. You should tweak these settings only after you sign up for ExtensionPay and connect a Stripe account. (You can click the image below to view a larger, more readable version.)
