Subscription is a payment product offered to merchants whose business model allows their users to pay a recurring price at regular intervals, to access the products or services provided by the merchant. Users are charged on a prearranged, recurring schedule automatically after obtaining one-time consent for the services / products they consume on an ongoing basis without any explicit payment action at their end. 

AI Router as a product integrates with multiple subscription-supported PAs to provide recurring payment options to users via Credit Card, Debit Card, and UPI Autopay. 
 

Enabling Payment Gateways and Paymodes for Subscription Transactions: 

For accepting Subscription payments via AI Router, you will first need to configure Subscription-supported payment gateways on the Router dashboard. Please visit the Gateway Configuration section to understand the detailed steps for configuring PAs / PGs on the AI Router account. 

Currently, AI Router supports Subscription payment on Credit Card, Debit Card, and UPI Autopay. To check the list of Payment Gateways / Aggregators supporting Subscription transactions, please visit PG integration section

Routing logic for Subscription Payment:

• Dynamic Routing for subscription transactions is only applicable for subscription registration.
• The gateway will be selected from the list of gateways enabled by the merchant for Subscription transactions. 
• The routing logic will depend on the SR for subscription payments only. 
• Merchants can also configure routing rules and preferences from the Router dashboard.
• No routing logic is applied at the time of renewal, cancellation, or modification of the subscription. These requests are directly routed to the payment gateway on which the subscription was originally registered.

Subscription Use-cases

Subscription Payments basically consist of four use-cases, as mentioned below:

• Subscription Registration
• Subscription Renewal
• Subscription Cancellation
• Subscription Refunds
   

To avail the subscription offering of AI Router, users will first need to choose a payment instrument and provide a one-time consent to: 

• To make the first payment
• To make all future payments automatically from the selected paymode as per the subscription plan specified while creating the subscription.

Customer Journey for Subscription Registration

1. On the merchant website, the user will proceed to the checkout page. This could be a merchant-owned custom page or a Paytm-owned checkout page. 
2. Customer will select from a list of payment options available.
    

Card

1. User selects Card as a payment option and enters their card number. 
2. If the user's card supports subscription transactions, a checkbox will be shown to the user for setting up automatic payments. (Assumption: We are assuming that the merchant has enabled Credit / Debit cards for Subscription transactions through the dashboard) 
   • If the user clicks on the checkbox, they will be able to see the subscription details: 
     • Current Transaction Amount
     • Renewal Amount
     • Subscription Frequency
     • Validity of Subscription 
     • Next payment due date
   • If the user clicks on Pay, without selecting the checkbox, it will be processed as a one-time payment. 
3. If the entered card does not support subscriptions, then the checkbox will not be shown to the user. Users can proceed with one-time payment only.
4. On clicking the Pay CTA, the user will be redirected to the OTP page to complete the transaction. 
5. User can also make Subscription transactions using Saved Card.

   Note: Token Creation for Subscription is mandatory, i.e. when the user will be select the checkbox for subscription payments, the checkbox for card tokenisation will be selected by default and cannot be disabled by the user. 

UPI Autopay

1. User selects UPI as a payment option and enters their VPA.
2. If the entered VPA supports subscription transactions, a checkbox will be shown to the user for setting up automatic payments. (Assumption: We are assuming that the merchant has enabled UPI for Subscription transactions through the dashboard) 
   • If the user clicks on the checkbox, they will be able to see the subscription details: 
     • Current Transaction Amount
     • Renewal Amount
     • Subscription Frequency
     • Validity of Subscription 
     • Next payment due date
   • If the user clicks on Pay, without selecting the checkbox, it will be processed as a one-time payment. 
3. If the entered VPA does not support subscriptions, then the checkbox will not be shown to the user. Users can proceed with one-time payment only.
4. On clicking the pay CTA, a polling page is opened with instructions to approve the UPI Collect request on the respective UPI App.

Bank Mandates

1. User selects bank mandates as a payment option.
2. List of issuing banks supporting bank mandates on the AI Router is displayed to the user
3. Once the user selects a bank, they can choose the mandate type(Netbanking / Debit Card) through which they would like to process the payment

   a. Netbanking:

    

   i.) If the user selects Netbanking, the NB login page will open

   ii.) User will enter the netbanking credential to login to their NB account and complete the transaction

    

   b. Debit Card: 

   
   i.) If the user selects Debit Card, they will be asked to enter their card details (card number, CVV, expiry)
   ii.) An OTP will be sent to the user’s registered mobile number
   iii.) User will enter the OTP to complete the transaction
    

4. Depending on the chosen payment option and if it is a one-time payment or subscription, the transaction will be routed to the respective payment gateways. On completion of payment, the user is redirected back to the merchant website.
5. Merchant website will inform the customer about the success / failure of the payment.

1. 24-72 hrs prior to the actual debit, the merchant will call the Initiate Pre-Notify API which will be routed to the same gateway through which the subscription registration was processed. 
2. Depending on the payment option selected by the user, a pre-notify message will be sent to the customer. 
    

   Payment Option	Transaction Amount	Pre-notify response
   Cards	Less than 15000	SMS will be sent by the card issuing bank. No action is required from the customer for renewing the payment
   	Greater than 15000	Pre-debit notification will be sent by the card issuing bank which will contain a link to authorize the payment.  Customers will have to authorize the payment via OTP. Once the user has given the authorisation, the actual debit will happen without 2-Factor-authentication
   UPI	Less than 15000	SMS will be sent by the primary bank linked to the VPA No action is required from the customer for renewing the payment
   	Between 15,000 to 1 Lakh	SMS will be sent by the primary bank linked to the VPA A UPI Collect request is raised against the customer's VPA. Collect request expiry is set to 24 hrs.

3. Success/ Failure of the Pre-debit notification is sent back to the merchant in the S2S Subscription Pre-Notify Callback.
4. Merchant can also call the status of Pre-debit notification by calling the Pre-Notify Status Check 
5. On the date of renewal, merchant will call Renew Subscription API, which will be routed to the original gateway through which the subscription was generated. 
6. The amount will be deducted from the customer's account and the Status received from the Payment Gateway will be sent to the merchant. 

Initiating Subscription renewal through dashboard

You can also initiate subscription renewals in bulk via the AI Router dashboard by following below steps: 

1. Login to the Router dashboard and navigate to the Accept Payments section. 
2. Under Accept Payments, go to Subscriptions. 
3. Go to Bulk Subscription. Here you will see the option to upload a Bulk file. 
4. Download the sample file for renewal. Fill in the details of the Subscription that you want to renew and upload the file.

1. To cancel an existing subscription, the merchant needs to call the Cancel Subscription API. 
2. The request is routed to the gateway through which the subscription was created. 
3. Once the request is processed, Router receives the status back from the payment gateway, and the same is shared with the merchant.

Dashboard for Subscription Transactions

1. You can view the Subscription transaction on any particular merchant account in the Subscription section under the Accept Payments tab. 
2. Here the list of subscriptions along with their payment gateways and Subscription ID will be displayed. 
3. You can also see further details of these Subscriptions by clicking on any of the list items
4. You will also have the option to cancel the subscription directly from the detail view. 
5. You can also download the Subscription Transaction Report through the download file option in the dashboard.
    

The refund flow of a subscription transaction is the same as that of one-time payment, i.e. Merchant can initiate the refund through the Router dashboard or via the following Refund APIs:

• Refund Apply API 
• Refund Status API

Please click here to see the detailed flow for Refund transactions. 
If you want to see the steps for initiating a refund through the dashboard - please click here.