How can I or customers set up recurring payments?

[skmccombie]

I am a life coach and perform my services by phone. I invoice customers through PayPal and I am trying to find a way to set up recurring or automatic payments (they usually sign up for a 3-6 month contract and pay monthly). But I'd like to take the monthly invoicing out of the picture and find a way to set up a recurring payment for the length of their contract.

Would I have to do this as a subscription or is there another way? I'm not interested in having a payment button on my website.

Thanks,

Stephanie

[skier]

Subscriptions or Recurring Payments .

Website Payments Standard offers Recurring Payments or Subscriptions.
This service is managed/maintained by PayPal and "requires" the customer to have a PayPal Account. When the customer makes a Subscription purchase, he or she is redirected to PayPal. Once on the PayPal Screens the customer can either sign into their PayPal account, or they would pay with their credit card and during the process, create a PayPal account.

Recurring Payments is also a feature available through Website Payments Pro.
Recurring Payments is an automatic billing service you manage and maintain via your web site by using an application programming interface or API and requires a server-side programming using .NET, PHP, Java, etc. The Recurring Payments API is not the same as Subscriptions and Recurring Billing available for Website Payments Standard, or the Recurring Billing available for PayFlow Link or PayFlow Pro. When the customer makes a Recurring Payment purchase, he or she can pay with a credit card but, is not redirected to PayPal. The customer does not leave your web site where as you are passing the customer's credit card info to PayPal for authorization. Therefore you are controlling the customer experience. You can also offer the customer the option to pay with their PayPal Account if they so desire through the use of Express Checkout. Note, using Website Payments Pro, you will also be required to meet current Payment Card Industry or PCI compliance standards. Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) are network security and business practice guidelines adopted by Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover Card, and JCB to establish a "minimum security standard" to protect customer’s payment card information. This is a requirement for all merchants that store, transmit, or process payment card information. Pro is currently only available to US, UK and Canadian Accounts.

Regards,

skier