Recurring Profiles and Subscription Payments

If I enabled a recurring profile price plan on one of my products that is configured to take $10.00 per month from the customer, would the customer need to send payment via a payment extension module (admin panel > extensions > module) that is known to officially support recurring payment options or is it possible to have a standard payment extension module that is designed for taking one payment but which relies on a CRON job to initiate the multiple subscription price withdrawals at set intervals?

The Recurring Profiles section of the OC Manual ( http://docs.opencart.com/catalog/profile/ ) makes no mention of needing a precise type of payment extension. Does this mean I can literally use any sort of payment extension that takes debit / credit card details and expect it to bill the customer at set intervals?

Any help?

You need a payment method that stores customer payment data with the payment processor. Otherwise you'd be storing customer credit card info on your own server, which violates PCI requirements. The only built-in payment method that supports recurring profiles is PayPal Express (to my knowledge).

If you're looking for a payment processor to store credit card info and allow subscriptions for your products, both my Stripe Payment Gateway Pro and Braintree Payment Gateway Pro support recurring profiles (by mapping them to subscription plans in Stripe or Braintree).

Otherwise, if you need your specific payment gateway to support recurring profiles, you'd need to get someone to modify it for you (if it even supports storing card info with the processor). If you need to find a developer, I recommend you post a request in the OpenCart "Commercial Support" forum, which is checked by a number of OpenCart developers. You can also try checking out the OpenCart "Partners" area.

Johnathan wrote:You need a payment method that stores customer payment data with the payment processor. Otherwise you'd be storing customer credit card info on your own server, which violates PCI requirements. The only built-in payment method that supports recurring profiles is PayPal Express (to my knowledge).

If you're looking for a payment processor to store credit card info and allow subscriptions for your products, both my Stripe Payment Gateway Pro and Braintree Payment Gateway Pro support recurring profiles (by mapping them to subscription plans in Stripe or Braintree).

Otherwise, if you need your specific payment gateway to support recurring profiles, you'd need to get someone to modify it for you (if it even supports storing card info with the processor). If you need to find a developer, I recommend you post a request in the OpenCart "Commercial Support" forum, which is checked by a number of OpenCart developers. You can also try checking out the OpenCart "Partners" area.

Thank you for the clarification. It really is appreciated.