Subscription payment link

A subscription link charges the buyer once at signup, saves their card, and bills them again on a schedule you define. Use it for memberships, SaaS subscriptions, weekly delivery boxes, annual renewals.

Create one

From Payment Links, click Create payment link and pick Recurring subscription as the amount type. A subscription settings panel appears under the amount type selector.

Subscription settings

Field	What it does	Required
Recurring amount	Per-cycle charge (e.g. 29.99 for $29.99/month).	Yes
Billing interval	day, week, month, or year.	Yes
Every N intervals	Default 1. Set 3 + interval=month for quarterly. Set 2 + interval=week for bi-weekly. Range 1–365.	No
Trial days	Days of free access before the first real charge. Range 0–365. Leave blank for no trial.	No
Setup fee	One-time charge added to the first invoice in addition to the recurring amount.	No
Total cycles	Hard cap on number of renewals. Leave blank for unlimited (until the buyer cancels). E.g. 12 + interval=month = 12-month commitment then auto-end.	No

What happens at checkout

1. Buyer enters their card and confirms.
2. If there's a setup fee, the first charge is setup_fee + recurring_amount (or just setup_fee during a trial).
3. If there's a trial, the first recurring charge is deferred until trial_days from now — the buyer's card is tokenised but not charged.
4. Genius Checkout creates a subscription record with status active (or trial) and saves it under the buyer's customer profile.

Ongoing renewals

The system attempts the next charge at each renewal date automatically. You don't have to do anything — the saved card token is reused.

• Successful renewal → subscription advances to the next cycle, completed_cycles increments.
• Failed renewal → the subscription enters past_due and goes into dunning — retries on day 1, day 3, and day 7 before the system gives up.
• Total cycles reached → subscription auto-completes with status expired.

Editing a subscription link

You can change the recurring amount, interval, trial, and setup fee from the link's edit page. Changes only affect new signups — existing subscribers keep the price and schedule they signed up under. To change an existing subscriber's amount, edit their subscription directly from Subscriptions.

Gateway must support tokenization

Subscription links can only run on gateways that support card tokenization. Check the Available Gateways tile capabilities chips on the Gateways page — look for the Tokenization chip.

Next step

Manage active subscriptions →