Accept payment for subscriptions using Alipay
Let customers pay for subscriptions using Alipay, with no engineering effort required on your part.
What's new?
Paddle now supports recurring transactions for Alipay, meaning customers can use it to pay for subscriptions.
There are no changes to endpoints or fields in the API as a result of this change — it's an update to the way the Paddle platform handles payments.
How it works
Alipay is a digital wallet for the Chinese market, used by over a billion people. It's part of an app that lets users book taxis, order food, access healthcare, and plan vacations. It's the most popular payment digital wallet in China, with over 50% of the market share there.
Previously, Alipay was only available for one-time purchases through Paddle Checkout. We updated the Paddle platform so that now you can use Alipay for recurring transactions, too.
This means customers can pay for subscriptions using Alipay. Paddle takes payment using Alipay initially, then saves it for future renewals and subscription charges.
The maximum transaction total for subscription renewals and charges is 1600 CNY. If a temporary discount is applied, the pre-discount total can't be more than this total. If the transaction total goes over 1600 CNY, payment fails and customers can update their payment details as part of dunning.
Next steps
This change is available now. To keep the Paddle platform safe for everyone, Alipay requires additional approval from Paddle. Check our Alipay guide for details on how to apply.
If you're already approved for Alipay for one-time purchases, you're ready to use Alipay for recurring purchases.
There are no changes to endpoints or fields in the API as a result of this change. However, you may start to see alipay as values for transaction.payments[].method_details.type for transactions created for subscriptions. These values were previously allowed, but not returned for subscription-related transactions.
If you've built billing information pages or similar screens in your frontend that show payment details for a customer, you may like to check how they display payments by Alipay. For testing instructions, see our Alipay guide.
