Automatic Saving of Payment Methods for New Customers

  • Resolved problematichild

    (@problematichild)


    1 year, 6 months ago

    Hello Stripe Support,

    We are aware that the “Enable payments via saved cards” feature is available on Stripe. However, this option is only displayed to customers who have an account.

    Our main concern lies with subscription services. For customers with existing accounts, saved payment methods will be used for recurring orders without issue. However, for new customers who do not have an account at the time of their first order, their payment method will not be saved since they are not registered until after placing the initial order. This creates a challenge for managing their recurring subscriptions.

    While we can manually add payment methods for these customers after their initial purchase, we would like to know if there is a way to automatically save payment methods for new customers, specifically for subscriptions, during their first order.

    Any guidance or solutions you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

    Thank you for your assistance.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • ckadenge (woo-hc)

    (@ckadenge)

    1 year, 6 months ago

    Hi @problematichild,

    Thank you for reaching out.

    I understand your concern about managing recurring subscriptions and payment methods for new customers.

    The WooCommerce Stripe Payment Gateway plugin does not support saving payment methods for customers without an account at the time of their first order. This is because the payment details are tied to a user account for security purposes.

    However, a possible workaround could be to require customers to create an account during their first purchase. This way, their payment method can be saved and used for future recurring orders. You can enable this option by going to WooCommerce > Settings > Accounts & Privacy > Account Creation and check the “Allow customers to create an account during checkout” box.

    Also, do you mind confirming the subscription plugin you’re using?

    Thread Starter problematichild

    (@problematichild)

    1 year, 6 months ago

    Hi @ckadenge ,

    We haven’t had any issues with subscriptions for new customers that we are aware of until recently, so we are unsure if this is a recurring problem. However, recent orders from new customers have triggered an error indicating invalid payment since no payment method was saved.

    We’ve been using Autoship Cloud powered by QPilot for subscription orders, and we are uncertain about how both Stripe and Autoship handle the saving of payment methods, especially for new customers.

    ckadenge (woo-hc)

    (@ckadenge)

    1 year, 6 months ago

    Hi @problematichild,

    We haven’t had any issues with subscriptions for new customers that we are aware of until recently, so we are unsure if this is a recurring problem.

    Do you remember making any changes before the issue started such as updating or installing plugin(s)?

    Also, did you try replicating the issue by trying to make a test order as a guest in your store?

    In the meantime, I recommend you enable logging in your Stripe Payment gateway. You can check that at WooCommerce > Settings > Payments > Stripe > Settings under Advanced settings: Log error messages and see if you can see the same missing payment_method error?

    If logging was enabled, can you share the latest Stripe log from WooCommerce > Status > Logs?

    Thread Starter problematichild

    (@problematichild)

    1 year, 6 months ago

    Hi @ckadenge ,

    In response to your previous question about account creation, we have checked the WooCommerce account settings and can confirm that account creation has been enabled: https://prnt.sc/52AvAaqMKJtc

    When a new customer placed an order, the account was automatically created, and the order is visible under the customer’s account rather than as a guest checkout.

    However, we are still seeing the “Missing Payment Information” notice on the order: https://prnt.sc/1zpLTVSqzc2I

    The only update we can think of is the Stripe update from mid-September, which we followed, including the re-authentication process outlined here: https://woocommerce.com/document/stripe/admin-experience/updated-requirements-for-stripe-plugin-mid-2024/. There have been no issues with other orders, but this seems to affect subscriptions specifically.

    We have enabled Stripe logging and haven’t found any errors in the logs. While we do have records of payment intents, when we checked the webhook delivery logs, we found that although the initial order was processed, the recurring order (which should be created in autoship) had no payment method saved: https://prnt.sc/3wU6gWoKmQ_P

    ckadenge (woo-hc)

    (@ckadenge)

    1 year, 6 months ago

    Thanks for sharing further updates on this issue @problematichild.

    As I understand, this only affects subscriptions. In that case, I recommend you run a conflict test having only the WooCommerce, WooCommerce Stripe Payment Gateway and your subscription plugin as the only active plugins in your store. Then, switch to a default theme like Storefront or Twenty Twenty-Four and check if this issue persists.

    Let us know how this goes.

    Thread Starter problematichild

    (@problematichild)

    1 year, 6 months ago

    Hi @ckadenge ,

    We reached out to Autoship QPilot regarding this issue, and they confirmed that Autoship Cloud enforces logic during WooCommerce checkout that requires any customer purchasing Autoship products to save their payment method at checkout.

    They were able to replicate the issue where payment methods were not saved at checkout for new subscribers.

    Since payment methods were previously saving as expected during checkout and account creation, their developers are reviewing the situation to determine if the change is due to something on Autoship’s side or Stripe’s.

    That being said, this issue is not isolated to our case—it has been occurring since the last Stripe plugin update. We are still uncertain whether it can be resolved by Autoship or Stripe. If you could also take a look, we would greatly appreciate it.

    Zee

    (@doublezed2)

    1 year, 6 months ago

    Hello problematichild,

    Thank you for the detailed information.

    At this stage, I recommend waiting for Autoship to complete its investigation.
    It’s possible that the issue arose due to recent updates in both plugins.

    Please keep me updated once you hear back from their team, and we can review it further from there.

    Best regards.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

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