ARB and Itemized Order Information

[mrickey]

We've been using AIM with Itemized Order Information to help reduce chargebacks for our subscriptions.  I'd like to transition to ARB for subscriptions, but I don't see fields for itemizing subscriptions.

Is this possible?  Is there a way to add a recurring bill to an existing transaction?  With this I could send the initial payment using AIM, then setup the recurring element.

Michael

[stymiee]

ARB doesn't have a concept of items like AIM does. It's really focused on pure subscriptions. You probably will want to look into using CIM for this although it would require writing your own subscription engine which isn't really difficult to do. You could put the items in the description field but that isn't a good way to organize that information.

Is there a way to add a recurring bill to an existing transaction?

If you want to add recurring billing to an existing transaction you would need to do it via the control panel manually as there is no way to do it programmatically. At least not yet. I am sure this is on the development team's to do list, though, so don't be surprised to see this in the future.

With this I could send the initial payment using AIM, then setup the recurring element.

You can do this through through their API, it just takes two API calls to do it. In fact, this is how most implemenations are done.

[TJPride]

A lot of people use AIM + ARB for subscriptions, since AIM allows immediate charging of the first payment, and then if that goes through, one can assume the ARB will work from then on. But in my experience, ARB is not terribly fun to work with. It's not -that- hard to set up a subscription, but dealing with updates, cancellations, cards that decline mid-subscription, storing payment info, etc. is all rather painful. Not to mention you can't change the interval time (for instance, if you wanted to give everyone a free month and skip that payment on their subscription). I'd personally recommend CIM and an automated process for charging, it'll be much easier to figure out and work with unless you have tens of thousands of subscriptions and they're all very rigid and never change.