Workaround linking CIM to ARB subscription?? Can this work?

[MrWinky1]

It seems I can’t pass a CIM payment profile to ARB, and CIM doesn’t have the capability of ARB transactions.   And I don't want to have the user type the card information again whenever they want to setup recurring schedules for  card registered in CIM.  

  I was wondering if this would work and if it is possible....In our web app,   everytime  the user creates a payment profile  for CIM, what if  I also immediately  create a "dummy" ARB record for that credit card (essentially a subscription that never executes).  This ARB subscription may never be activated.   (Authorize.net hasn't given me a whole lot of choice here) 

Later, if the user wants a create and activate a recurring schedule associated with that CIM payment profile, I would go back to update the "dummy" ARB subscription (I would've saved the ARB id and stored it along with CIM id locally in our database).

My questions are:

1. How can I create an ARB subscription that is inactive (which field would be 0 or some way to “pause” billing)
2. If I stored the ARB subscription ID number on my local system, can I go back at a later time to that "inactive" subscription  and activate it by passing the date and time inforamtion without having to pass the card number information (or other information that we no longer have since this occurs after the intiial CIM/ARB registration process)?

Thanks for any help on this

[RichardH]

Hello @MrWinky1 

Automatic Recurring Billing and Customer Information Manager do not currently work together, your choice is to use either one or the other.  We do have an enhancement idea recorded here where you can add your voide and provide any additional details: http://community.developer.authorize.net/t5/Ideas/ARB-and-CIM-Interoperability/idi-p/48449

Richard

[MrWinky1]

Thanks but I think my method is much simpler. If you do know the answers to my two questions, I would appreciate it.

[RichardH]

Hello @MrWinky1 

Authorize.Net does not currently have an "inactive" subscription capability, so the answer to both of your questions is no.  You can currently create, update or cancel a subscription.  Please refer to our API Reference for specific details.

You are welcome to post this as a new feature using our Ideas forum. This will allow others to vote on and make suggestions to improve the request.

If you need greater flexibility that we currently offer, developers have sucessfully used a combination of customer profiles and their own scheduler.

Richard

[MrWinky1]

Well, couldn't I create a subscription that doesn't start until say 2020? Wouldn't that in fact be the same thing as a pause state - or whatever is the max year that could be added.

And thank you for that helpful suggestion of offering this as an idea, however since people have been asking for this since 2009 I'm going to assume my itty-bitty voice wouldn't really be heard. ;)