Recurring payments

Copy for LLMView as Markdown

Recurring payments are repeated charges where a shopper gives you ongoing permission to charge their card or local payment method for a product or service. Typical recurring payment scenarios include:

Subscriptions and memberships: SaaS plans (monthly/annual), media/content access, fitness memberships.
Usage-based plans with recurring billing cycles and auto top-ups: Pay-as-you-go APIs, metered usage, marketing spend, wallet top-ups.
Installment plans: Splitting a one-off purchase into multiple scheduled payments, for example, 4 fortnightly payments.

In Airwallex, recurring payments can be implemented in two ways:

Recurring with Payments: Uses core Payments objects and requires you to own all billing logic.
Recurring with Billing: Uses Airwallex Billing to manage subscriptions, invoicing, and dunning on top of Payments.

This page helps you choose the integration path that best fits your business needs and understand how the key objects fit together.

Payments vs Billing for recurring

Under the hood, both Payments and Billing recurring models rely on the Credential-on-file (CoF) payment model, where the shopper authorizes you to store their payment credentials for future use, and later charges are processed using those stored, tokenized credentials instead of asking the shopper to re-enter their details every time.

Subsequent payments using stored credentials may be initiated by the shopper or you the merchant.

Customer-initiated transactions (CIT): Shopper is in session and actively confirms the payment (for example, one-click checkout).
Merchant-initiated transactions (MIT): You charge off-session under a prior agreement, for example, subscription renewals, installments, usage-based charges.

For full details on CoF, CIT, MIT, and initial vs subsequent payments, see Credential-on-file (CoF) payments.

Recurring with Payments

Uses Payments APIs and requires you to model your own plans, invoices, retries, and notifications.

You need to capture CoF agreements in a PaymentConsent, which is linked to a PaymentMethod and a Customer, and includes fields to indicate who triggered the payment (customer vs merchant) and whether the agreement is scheduled MIT, unscheduled MIT, or installments MIT. You then create and confirm PaymentIntents against that consent for each actual charge (CIT or MIT).

In Payments, the Customer object represents the shopper profile for PaymentIntents, and contains:

Identity and contact details.
Saved PaymentMethods (cards or local payment methods).
One or more PaymentConsents describing how those methods may be reused.

When you create PaymentIntents using the Customer ID, Airwallex can present saved methods at checkout or run off-session MITs using the appropriate consent.

Recurring with Billing

Uses Billing’s subscription engine to manage plans, invoicing, and dunning, with Payments providing the underlying charges.

You need to set up the billing profile and capture agreement terms as part of BillingCustomers, Subscriptions and Invoices. Billing uses PaymentSources and underlying Payments objects to execute CIT and MIT charges according to the subscription schedule and dunning rules.

In Billing, the BillingCustomer object represents the billing profile used by Subscriptions and Invoices, and contains:

Billing details and contact channels for invoicing and subscription communication.
Holds one or more PaymentSources, which point to the underlying payment instruments (for example, a stored card or bank account) that Billing will charge for subscriptions and invoices.

Payments checkout products—such as Hosted Payment Page and Payment Links—work only with Customer objects and do not automatically create BillingCustomer objects. In contrast, Hosted Billing Checkout and the Billing APIs create and use BillingCustomer objects when managing subscriptions.

Choose your recurring payments solution

If your primary goal is to collect and reuse card or local payment method details for recurring charges, choose Recurring with Payments. If you need to manage subscriptions end to end, including plans, trials, proration, and dunning, choose Recurring with Billing.

Use the table below as a decision guide.

	Recurring with Payments	Recurring with Billing
Best suited for	Merchants who need flexible payment schedules or have an existing subscription/billing system and just need payment processing.	Merchants who want a managed subscription stack (plans, invoices, proration, dunning) on top of Payments.
Primary API objects	Customer, PaymentMethod, PaymentConsent, PaymentIntent	BillingCustomer, PaymentSource, Subscription or Invoice
Who owns billing logic (pricing, frequency, term)?	You or an external billing system. Pricing, billing cycles, and terms are defined and managed in your own backend or external billing system.	Airwallex Billing. Pricing and billing schedules are configured on Products/Prices and enforced through Subscriptions (including frequency, term, and how charges are generated each cycle).
Who owns invoicing and billing statements?	You or an external billing system.	Airwallex Billing can generate invoices, credit notes, and related billing documents.
Who owns retries and dunning?	You define retry strategy and communications using webhooks and your own billing logic.	Airwallex Billing has built-in retry and dunning flows for subscription renewals and invoices.
Lifecycle management (trials, proration, plan changes, cancellation)	You implement lifecycle rules and proration in your application.	Airwallex Billing manages subscription state (trial, active, unpaid, cancelled), proration, and plan changes.
Checkout UI	Supports Payment Links, Plugins, Hosted Payment Page, Drop-in Element, Embedded Elements, Native API, Mobile SDK.	Hosted Billing Checkout for built-in subscriptions and invoices, Digital invoice links, or Payments checkout UI using additional server-side calls.

Product support

The table below summarizes common recurring types and which products are best suited to each.

Recurring type	Description	Best implemented with
Scheduled MIT	Off-session recurring charges at fixed intervals (for example, monthly or annual renewals with predictable amounts).	Recurring with Payments using PaymentConsent (scheduled MIT) and your own billing logic or Recurring with Billing using Subscriptions and Hosted Billing Checkout.
Installment MIT	A single purchase split into a fixed number of scheduled charges over a defined period.	Recurring with Payments using PaymentConsent (installments MIT) and your own installment schedule or Billing for more complex installment plans combined with subscription logic.
Subscriptions (plans, trials, proration, dunning)	Ongoing access to a product or service with recurring billing cycles, lifecycle states, and dunning.	Recurring with Billing, using BillingCustomers, PaymentSources, Subscriptions, Invoices, and Hosted Billing Checkout, optionally combined with Payments checkout UI to collect initial payment methods.