I need you guys help in finding a solution for an issue with the Shopify billing system. Our company has an app on Shopify that sells subscriptions, but we encountering a problem with how Shopify processes billing. Below is the full workflow for how customers purchase a subscription plan on my website to use our service:
- Customers install our app on their Shopify store.
- They select a plan, and we redirect them to approve the transaction on their Shopify store.
- Upon successful approval, they receive a 3-day free trial to use our service.
The issue we’re facing is with how Shopify Billing delays subscription charges. Even without a trial, Shopify does not charge the customer immediately after they approve a subscription. Instead, Shopify may wait days — or sometimes much longer — before attempting the charge depending in to the billing-cycle.
This creates a big problem:
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Customers can start using our service right away without having actually paid.
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Many use credit cards with insufficient funds or invalid details.
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By the time Shopify attempts to charge them (days or even months later), the payment often fails.
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At that point, the customer may already have closed their store or let it freeze, meaning they benefited from our platform for free while we lost revenue (this is happening for us right now).
Currently, Shopify only notifies us via webhook when a charge attempt fails, but this happens too late — after the customer has already taken advantage of the service.
What we need is a way to ensure customers are charged immediately when they approve a subscription or after trial end, so that only paying users can continue using our service and we can protect our revenue.
Please help,