How subscriptions work

A subscription is a buyer paying for one of your subscription products every week, month, 3 months or year.

Renewals by reminder

Mobile money can't be charged without the buyer approving each payment, so Paylead doesn't charge anyone automatically. Instead it reminds them, and they pay in one tap:

When	What the subscriber gets
3 days before the period ends	Email and SMS: "renews on 13 Nov, renew here"
The day it ends	Email and SMS: "due today"
2 days later	Email and SMS: "last day to renew"
3 days after it ended	It expires. Email: "your subscription has ended"

Reminders go out once a day in the morning. Texts are on Paylead, not your SMS credits.

Every payment, the first one and every renewal, is a normal order with the normal fee. It shows in your Orders, adds to your wallet, and the subscriber gets a receipt.

Statuses

Status	Meaning	has_access
incomplete	Checkout started, never paid. Not shown in lists	no
active	Paid up	yes
past_due	The period ended. In the 3-day grace period	yes
cancelled	They cancelled and the paid period ran out	no
expired	Not renewed in time	no

A cancelled subscription keeps status: active until the end of the period they paid for, with cancelled_at set. It won't renew, and no more reminders go out.

Paying early, paying late

• Early: paying before the period ends adds a full period after the current end date. Nobody loses days.
• During grace: the new period starts from the old end date, so the grace days count as used.
• After it expired: the new period starts the day they pay.

Prices

A subscriber keeps the price they signed up at. If you change the product's price later, only new subscribers pay the new one.

Matching subscriptions to your users

Pass your own id for the user as ref when they subscribe. Paylead stores it on the subscription and sends it back everywhere: on the return to your app, in the API and in webhooks.

https://paylead.app/subscribe/k3x9pa?ref=USER_123&[email protected]

If someone opens the subscribe page with a ref that already has an active subscription, they're taken to their manage page instead of paying twice.

Without a ref, Paylead matches subscribers by email.

The pages your subscribers see

The subscribe page, /subscribe/{code}, asks for their name, email and phone, then takes the payment. You can fill these in with ?name=, ?email= and ?phone=.

The return. After paying, they're sent to the product's after-purchase link with ?subscription=, ?ref= and ?status= added. With no link set, they see a confirmation page.

The manage page, /subscription/{token}, shows when it renews and their payments, and lets them renew or cancel. Every email and text links to it. In the API it's manage_url.

Selling subscriptions in your store

A subscription product also has a normal product page in your store, and can go in funnels like any product. Buying it there starts a subscription too, without a ref.

Cancelling for a subscriber

From your dashboard (Get paid → Subscriptions → the subscriber → Cancel) or the API:

curl -X POST https://paylead.app/api/v1/subscriptions/sub_8f2k1m0q9z/cancel \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_live_your_key"

They keep access until the end of the paid period. If they're already in the grace period, access ends straight away.