Subscriptions: set up and sell

What LatchPay subscriptions are

With subscriptions, buyers pay for a product again and again on a schedule you set: a bag of coffee every 4 weeks (a physical subscription), or access to content or a service every month (digital content or service or membership). Everything is configured in LatchPay under Subscriptions: the frequencies, the discount, a trial or introductory price and an optional minimum number of payments.

• The first payment is taken in the LatchPay checkout. Whop saves the card for the next payments on your own Whop business.
• Every later payment is charged by LatchPay on the due date, at 06:00 in your store's time zone, and becomes a new paid Shopify order, tagged LatchPay subscription.
• The price is fixed when the buyer subscribes: the product price after your discount, the shipping and the currency. Changing a price in Shopify later does not change existing subscriptions.
• Buyers manage their subscriptions themselves in a portal they open from a link in every e-mail. See the buyer portal, cancelling and withdrawal.

Subscriptions are on both plans, Starter and Scale. The usage fee on subscription orders is 2%; see Subscriptions: fees, renewals and failed payments.

The go-live checklist

Open Subscriptions → Settings. The switch at the top turns subscriptions on for the current store, and it only turns on when every item of the go-live checklist is done. Re-check checks them all again.

1. 1

   Whop permissions

   LatchPay needs the subscription permissions on your Whop business. See Re-approve LatchPay on Whop below.
2. 2

   Shopify subscription scopes

   Your Shopify app needs two more scopes. See Add the subscription scopes below.
3. 3

   Your business details

   Your legal name, address and contact e-mail appear in every subscription e-mail. LatchPay reads them from Shopify (Settings → General); you can override them under Sender.
4. 4

   The cancel link in your storefront footer

   Buyers must be able to cancel online without logging in. Copy the URL shown in the checklist and add it as a link with the text Cancel contracts here to your storefront footer (in Shopify: Online Store → Navigation → Footer menu). Then tick the box. LatchPay's theme line checks your storefront once a day and tells you on the Subscriptions page when it cannot find the link.
5. 5

   The withdrawal link

   The same for the withdrawal page: add the URL to your footer or to the order status page, then tick the box.
6. 6

   The subscription terms

   Read and accept the subscription terms. The version and the time you accepted them are recorded.

Add the subscription scopes to your Shopify app

LatchPay adds subscription options (Shopify calls them selling plans) to your products, so your product pages and Shopify know about them. That needs two scopes on the Shopify app you created in the Dev Dashboard: write_products and write_purchase_options.

1. 1

   Open your app

   In Shopify's Dev Dashboard, open the app you created for LatchPay and go to Versions.
2. 2

   Add the scopes

   Create a new version and add write_products and write_purchase_options to the scopes it already has. Keep every scope that is there.
3. 3

   Release and approve

   Release the version and approve the new scopes in your store.
4. 4

   Re-check

   In LatchPay, open Shopify and press Re-check. The Subscriptions card there shows the scopes as granted.

A store connected with an older admin-created app token cannot sell subscriptions: Shopify does not allow subscriptions for those apps. Connect through a Dev Dashboard app first; see Connect your Shopify store.

On a few stores Shopify does not show subscription options at all. LatchPay's picker then adds the choice to the cart line itself, and LatchPay's checkout applies the discount. Settings says so when your store runs this way; nothing else changes for you.

Re-approve LatchPay on Whop

Renewals are charged on your Whop business, and a free trial saves a card without charging it. LatchPay needs four optional Whop permissions for that: payment:setup_intent:manage, payment:setup_intent:read, webhook_receive:setup_intents and member:payment_methods:read. Stores that connected before subscriptions existed have not approved them yet.

Open Whop in the dashboard: the Subscriptions line says what is missing, with the link to re-approve LatchPay on Whop. After you approved, press Re-check in Subscriptions → Settings; LatchPay asks Whop again at that moment. See Whop permissions LatchPay asks for.

On a store that takes its payments on Mollie, renewals are charged on a saved card on your Mollie account: subscription checkouts offer cards only, never iDEAL, Bancontact or another bank method. Subscriptions need recurring card payments on your Mollie account: allow LatchPay to manage customers and mandates (connect again) and switch on recurring card payments in Mollie. The Mollie page shows Recurring cards. See Connect your Mollie account.

On a store that takes its payments on Adyen, renewals are charged on a saved card on your Adyen merchant account: subscription checkouts offer cards only. Subscriptions need the Merchant Recurring role on your Adyen API key; the Adyen page shows Recurring cards. See Connect your Adyen account.

Create an offer

An offer says which products can be bought as a subscription and on which terms. Open Subscriptions → Offers and press Add offer:

• Kind: Physical subscription, Digital content, or Service or membership. The kind decides the trial type, the withdrawal sentence buyers see, and whether an address is needed.
• Internal name (only you see it) and the title buyers see, with optional translations.
• Products: one or more Shopify products, optionally only some variants. A product can be in one offer at a time. Gift cards and bundles cannot be sold as subscriptions.
• Frequencies: up to 6, for example every 2, 4 and 8 weeks, with one marked as the default.
• Discount: the percentage off Shopify's price on every payment.
• Introductory offer: none, a different discount on the first order, or a trial. A digital trial is a number of free days; the card is saved and the first payment is at the end of the trial. A physical trial is the first delivery at a trial price. The trial quantity per order (default 1) and One trial per customer (on by default) keep trials from being reused.
• Minimum payments: optional. The minimum times the frequency can be at most 12 months.
• Offer in the checkout block: whether the Subscribe and save block in the checkout may offer it.

The editor shows the line buyers will read, for example "Subscribe and save 10% · every 4 weeks · minimum 3 payments", and warns you about anything that needs care: another app's subscription options on the same product, discount codes that also apply to first orders, the reminder e-mail a trial requires, a digital interval longer than a month, or variants whose renewal would be very small.

Save sends the offer to Shopify within a minute; the list shows In Shopify once it is there, or Sync failed with the reason. Archive removes the options from your products. Existing subscriptions of an edited or archived offer keep the terms the buyer agreed to.

Where buyers subscribe

On the product page

While subscriptions are on, LatchPay's theme line shows a choice above the add-to-cart button of every product in an offer: One-time purchase or Subscribe and save with the frequency. If your theme has its own subscription picker, choose My theme shows the subscription options under Product pages in Subscriptions → Settings.

In the checkout

A cart with subscription lines opens in the LatchPay checkout like any other. Above the card fields the buyer reads what will be charged and how often; above the Pay button they see a summary with the minimum and the cancel options, and they tick a box to agree to the recurring payments. The button reads Subscribe with obligation to pay. Subscriptions are paid by card for now.

The Subscribe and save block in the checkout editor offers buyers to turn a one-time line into a subscription with one click. It is never ticked for the buyer. See Blocks, "Subscribe and save".

A cart with another app's subscription still goes to Shopify's own checkout, so those subscribers stay where they are.

Orders in Shopify

• The first order is written like any LatchPay order. One-time items in the same cart are only in the first order.
• Every renewal is a new paid order with the tag LatchPay subscription, the attributes latchpay_subscription (the reference, such as SUB-7K3Q9) and latchpay_cycle, at the price and shipping the buyer agreed to.
• The buyer's Shopify customer gets the tag LatchPay subscriber while they have a live subscription.
• In LatchPay's Orders list, a subscription order shows the line "Subscription · SUB-7K3Q9 · cycle 3".

A first order your fraud rules hold starts its subscription paused. Approving it in the review queue starts the subscription; rejecting it ends it and tells the buyer.

The Subscriptions page

Subscriptions shows your monthly recurring revenue (excluding tax and shipping), active subscribers, churn, failed payments, new subscriptions and renewal revenue for the period you choose, then a Needs attention list and every subscription with search, filters and Export CSV. Test subscriptions are never counted.

Open a subscription to see its payments and its full history, and to act for the buyer: skip the next payment, pause, resume, change the date, frequency, item, quantity or address, resend the manage link, or cancel. A change you make that raises the amount or changes the frequency applies 7 days after the buyer is e-mailed, and you can never move a payment earlier than scheduled.

Switching off

Switching subscriptions off in Settings stops new subscriptions at once and removes the options from your product pages. Existing subscriptions keep renewing. To stop them, pause or cancel them, or use Pause all under Danger zone. Switching the LatchPay checkout off works the same way for subscriptions.

Disconnecting the Shopify store removes LatchPay's subscription options from your products first. If that fails, uninstall your LatchPay app in Shopify (Settings → Apps and sales channels); Shopify removes them 48 hours later.

Limits