Erwin-checkout-sepa

[candid swallow]

Hey! What's the Q?

[late rain]

My question is about Stripe Checkout on subscription mode, with the payment method iDeal.

At first, the documentation was rather vague and explained I needed to work with PaymentIntents and Sources, converting the iDeal payment myself to use SEPA Direct Debit, and charge it every month. I did also come across Stripe Checkout having the rather secretive mode (not shown in most guides) of 'setup'.

However, later in the day, I found this guide: https://stripe.com/docs/billing/subscriptions/ideal

And the above guide does not mention PaymentIntents or Sources. As a matter of fact, it makes it seem like the iDeal payment is converted to SEPA Direct Debit by Stripe Checkout itself. This obviously would be tremendously helpful to me. However, Twitter support did not or could not confirm to me if this is going to indeed charge the user automatically through SEPA Direct Debit every month. And for that matter, send them a notification two days prior about the upcoming charge, automatically through Stripe. And I'm wondering if there is going to be a charge of 0,01 euro through iDeal first and right after, a charge for the subscription amount through SEPA Direct Debit? Or is the first full amount through iDeal right away and the subsequent charges through SEPA Direct Debit every month?

My feedback is that the guide I linked is updated with the above, that would be of great help for future similar use-cases of others.

Because the test environment does not actually redirect to iDeal for obvious reasons, I'd like to have confirmation about the above instead of trying it out myself in Production.

I know it's a rather specific set of questions, but I hope I can find out before rolling out this update to my users.

Both Twitter DM support and Chat Support keep linking me to this guide: https://stripe.com/docs/payments/ideal/set-up-payment

But that guide says I have to setup a PaymentIntent with SEPA myself. The guide that I've linked before has no mention of PaymentIntents whatsoever.

[candid swallow]

the documentation was rather vague and explained I needed to work with PaymentIntents and Sources
You should not use Sources, no. iDEAL works with the Payment Methods API.

As a matter of fact, it makes it seem like the iDeal payment is converted to SEPA Direct Debit by Stripe Checkout itself
This is correct.

And for that matter, send them a notification two days prior about the upcoming charge, automatically through Stripe
We can, yes: https://stripe.com/docs/payments/sepa-debit#debit-notification-emails

And I'm wondering if there is going to be a charge of 0,01 euro through iDeal first and right after, a charge for the subscription amount through SEPA Direct Debit?
Not sure what you're asking here.

[late rain]

@candid swallow Clear, thank you.

Do you know why the other support channels kept telling me to implement everything myself through the other guide (https://stripe.com/docs/payments/ideal/set-up-payment) ? Am I missing something?

As a matter of fact, why would anyone use the mode 'setup' to setup iDeal subscriptions and handle the PaymentIntents themselves, if Stripe Checkout converts that automatically on mode 'subscription'?

(discard the 0,01 euro question, I didn't read properly, turns out it's only when using a free trial mechanism, makes sense).

[candid swallow]

Setup mode is generally to 'save' a payment method for future ad-hoc off-session payments: https://stripe.com/docs/payments/save-and-reuse?platform=web#charge-saved-payment-method

[late rain]

Aha, clear. Given it's a monthly or yearly subscription, using the mode 'subscription' then makes most sense.

[candid swallow]

Yes, exactly! That will create the subscription to handle the recurring payments automatically

[late rain]

Could there be an improvement/ticket raised to improve the guide I followed (https://stripe.com/docs/billing/subscriptions/ideal) to clarify that it automatically converts into SEPA Direct Debit on the subscription cycle configured in Stripe?

[candid swallow]

Kind of alluded to here: https://stripe.com/docs/payments/sepa-debit/accept-a-payment

[late rain]

Because it states "You can then use the SEPA Direct Debit payment method to accept future payments." at the very top. It confused me.

[candid swallow]

Kind of alluded to here: https://stripe.com/docs/billing/subscriptions/ideal#:~:text=After your customer authenticates the payment%2C Stripe saves your customer’s IBAN in a SEPA Direct Debit payment method. You can then use the SEPA Direct Debit payment method to accept future payments.

[late rain]

So basically, that sentence is wrong 🙈 ?

It happens automatically.

"Stripe will then use the SEPA Direct Debit payment method to accept future subscription payments." or something.

Anyhow, thank you a lot for the swift response and clarification @candid swallow !