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Im getting (big) customers that prefer to pay by invoice instead of card.

I would like Stripe to handle these subscriptions as well, for example send a webhook on subscription end. But it seems like you can't add a subscription to a customer who dsn't have an active payment source. Any ideas?




Slava @ Stripe here.

We're currently testing functionality that does exactly this. Shoot me an email to [email protected], and I'll add you to the beta. (Also, would love to work together to iron out any kinks you might run into)


It's not the best solution, but if the plan you subscribe them to is $0 in Stripe you shouldn't have a problem. This is currently what we do. I'd love to hear a better answer, though.


What we do is process a check in our admin which hits Stripe's API to create the customer if necessary (no payment source necessary when doing this via API in our experience) and then adjust the customer's account balance by the amount of the check. Then we process the customer's subscription and Stripe automatically debits the customer's account to pay the invoice.


Here's what we do:

Give the customer a very short trial (5 minutes) and put them on the plan they want. After a couple hours, come back when the invoice failed to charge (because they have no payment source) and close/forgive the invoice.

That will keep the subscription running as expected and keep your analytics (Baremetrics, Profitwell, etc) accurate. When the next cycle comes around, you'll get charge failed notifications from Stripe and you can do it all over again.




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