#twoscoops - subscription migration
quasi swallow
Good question, checking in to this. Are these subscriptions on the connected account as well or are do you need both to be migrated?
Also is this your AE at Stripe?
subtle narwhal
Yes, our AE at Stripe.
rain tulip
I'd recommend talking to them directly instead and they can chat with experts internally
this isn't really something we can help with here in details. But overall: this is mostly impossible and you would start from scratch on a new account, recreate all the connected accounts, all the subscriptions, etc.
subtle narwhal
Under that account we have our SaaS subscriptions, but in our app we allow our clients to create their own Connect merchant accounts
rain tulip
The one thing Stripe can do internally is copy customers and card details https://stripe.com/docs/account/data-migrations/pan-copy
subtle narwhal
Thanks, I'll review the data migration docs.
If we have to ask our customers to re-onboard into connect it'll be a non-starter.
rain tulip
that is unfortunately mostly a requirement
what are you really trying to do exactly?
You mentioned FX, can you give me a concrete example of one payment flow?
subtle narwhal
Well, what we are ultimately trying to do is negotiate a lower Connect payout fee, but after review your data team determined that our account is below margin due to the high number of FX and International transfers and it was suggested that moving our US customers to a US based Stripe account would rectify that.
Right now, approximately 80% of our subscription holders are in the US, but our Stripe account is Canadian. So 72% of our transactions incur both an international and currency exchange.
Additionally all of our merchant Connect accounts are set up under our Canadian Stripe account, even for US customers.
rain tulip
sure sure but there are things you can do
Let me take a concrete example
You are a Canadian platform, you're accepting a $15 USD monthly payment from a US-based customer who is paying a US-based business. The customer is cus_123 and the business has the connected account acct_123
The problem is that you create the subscription on your own platform account, where the charge in USD appears to come from Canada and US banks add a fee for it.
But you don't want that, you want to make it look like the charge comes from the US since the business accepting the funds is in the US
Is that a good summary?
subtle narwhal
Exactly
subtle narwhal
Custom
rain tulip
Are you familiar with the concept of on_behalf_of in our API?
subtle narwhal
Not specifically, but our primary dev would be.
We make reference to it in a few places
rain tulip
okay so basically this is a concept in our API that allows you to say "who is the merchant of record" and related things
https://stripe.com/docs/connect/charges-transfers#on-behalf-of is a good way to understand more about it
So Subscriptions don't officially support this. But we do have a beta for it. And if you used this, then it would mostly solve your problem. Both the FX and international fee. It would allow you to say "Please create a $15 USD/month subscription on behalf of acct_123, transfer $14 USD to them and keep $1 USD for me as the platform" for example and the charge will appear to be from the US and the $14 won't be FX-ed to CAD and then back to USD
you're need to ask your Account Executive to help you get access (shouldn't be an issue)
this might drastically help without having to rebuild your entire integration
subtle narwhal
Great, thank you!
Rebuilding the integration isn't really the issue, it's asking our customers to resubmit their business and personal verification details to setup new connect accounts under a different Stripe account.
And the loss of their current payment history
rain tulip
yeah I think my approach would work way better
subtle narwhal
Thank you for your guidance. Much appreciated.