Revenue from recurring orders should be easy to implement and monetize
Giving shoppers an easy way to reorder products that need frequent replenishment — think pet food, beauty products and household essentials — can turn a simple idea into an opportunity for new, recurring revenue.
As many merchants know, however, implementing recurring orders hasn’t always been a seamless experience for the people making it work. Under the hood, allowing merchants to automatically create and place orders on a predefined schedule meant building a separate payment flow for recurring transactions.
For developers and engineers, this meant implementing workarounds and patches to ensure that the payment method the buyer chose when setting up the subscription would be linked to the right recurring order, and remain active months later.
If the link between the payment method and the recurring order failed, shoppers had to re-enter their card details for a purchase they had already committed to, resulting in additional and unnecessary friction.
These issues are now a thing of the past with commercetools Checkout now fully supporting Recurring Orders. For merchants, this means a much more straightforward way to enable recurring orders automatically, including:
- A smoother path to repeat purchases. Shoppers can complete their initial purchase and securely store their payment method, so they don’t need to re-enter their card details for future orders.
- Less payment engineering to build and maintain. Merchants can use Checkout to support recurring payments rather than building bespoke payment flows for each connector.
- A more scalable foundation for recurring commerce. By using Checkout as the payment layer for recurring orders, merchants can build recurring purchase experiences without having to own and maintain the underlying payment logic.
As a result, merchants can use the same commercetools ecosystem for both one-time and recurring purchases, reducing the amount of custom payment logic they need to build and maintain.
Recurring orders, now native in commercetools Checkout
commercetools already provides Recurring Orders capabilities that allow merchants to define future orders based on a predefined schedule. With support for commercetools Checkout, the initial payment experience and setup for subsequent payments can now be handled in a single Checkout flow.
This means merchants can support recurring commerce without creating an entirely separate payment experience for shoppers. A typical journey looks like this:
Shopper chooses a recurring purchase → completes Checkout → payment method is securely stored → future orders and payments can happen automatically.
For example, a shopper might choose to have contact lenses delivered every month. They select the recurring purchase on the merchant’s storefront and proceed to Checkout. During the transaction, the shopper can choose a new credit card, an alternative payment provider such as PayPal or Klarna, or a previously stored payment method, ensuring a seamless and secure experience for all future automated transactions. Once checkout is complete, the chosen payment method is securely tokenized and stored for future transactions associated with the recurring order.
Future orders can then be created according to the configured schedule and the stored payment method can be used to process the corresponding payments without requiring the shopper to return to Checkout and enter their payment details each time.
The payoff: Fewer drop-offs for buyers, one payment setup for merchants
For merchants, one of the biggest advantages is having a more consistent foundation for different purchasing models, supporting experiences such as:
- Regular replenishment of frequently purchased products.
- Scheduled deliveries of household or personal care products.
- Repeat purchases of consumables like pet food or contact lenses.
- Subscription-style product experiences.
This gives merchants the flexibility to design the customer experience around their products and business model, while Checkout provides the payment foundation for both initial and subsequent transactions.
In addition, merchants can use commercetools Checkout across both use cases, instead of maintaining separate payment experiences for one-time and recurring transactions. This can help reduce the amount of custom payment logic needed to support recurring commerce and keep payment handling within the commercetools ecosystem.
Recurring Orders are supported with both Complete Checkout and Payment Only modes, handling the initial payment and securely tokenizing payment details for future charges.
Checkout also works with the existing commercetools payment capabilities around recurring orders. Payment operations such as capture, cancellation and refunds, as well as supported automated reversals, can continue to be managed through the existing payment infrastructure.
You decide how recurring orders should behave in your checkout
As shoppers become more accustomed to repeat-purchase experiences, merchants need the flexibility to support commerce that continues beyond a single transaction.
With Recurring Orders in commercetools Checkout, merchants can bring the payment experience for recurring commerce into the same Checkout foundation they use for one-time purchases. This creates a more consistent experience for shoppers and gives merchants a simpler way to support recurring transactions across their commerce architecture.
Whether the use case is a traditional subscription, regular replenishment, or another scheduled repeat purchase, Checkout can help connect the initial transaction with what comes next.
Native support for recurring orders within commercetools Checkout is now in public beta. Contact our team for more information — or check our documentation to start building your Checkout.
