Where do I set Max Failed Payments?

Using PayPal, how can I set the Max Failed Payments variable (i.e. the number of times PayPal will try to charge someone before giving up)?

Is that an option that I set on the PayPal site, or from the s2member admin?

Hi Sacha,

That’s something controlled by PayPal. I don’t know of any place to configure that setting, but you may want to contact PayPal to see if it’s possible.

So I’ve found that you can set this number on a user-per-user basis via the PayPal admin panel, by listing all your subscription profiles, clicking on one, and then clicking “edit”.

It remains to be seen if you can set this number on a global level for all new subscriptions, or if it can be set via the PayPal API when creating a new profile.

This Stack Overflow post seems to indicate that this variable can be set through the API somehow:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9253891/paypal-subscription-payment-failed

Using PayPal, how can I set the Max Failed Payments variable (i.e. the number of times PayPal will try to charge someone before giving up)?

To manage the existing subscriptions you’ll have to do it from PayPal, but for new ones, you can set that in s2Member’s shortcode using the rra attribute. There are different limitations depending on the PayPal service you’re using, so it works a bit differently in buttons and pro-forms:

[hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Buttons -› Shortcode Attributes -> rra[/hilite]

rra=”1″ Reattempt failed payments? Possible values: 0 = do NOT reattempt billing when/if a recurring payment fails; 1 = yes, DO reattempt billing when/if a recurring payment fails. With PayPal® Standard integration, PayPal® will retry a maximum of 2 times when you set rra=”1″; after that, a Subscription would be terminated due to Max Failed Payments having been reached. PayPal® Standard integration does NOT make it possible to configure Max Failed Payments, it simply defaults to a value of 2 whenever rra=”1″, indicating that you DO want to retry failed payments.

[hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Pro-Forms -› Shortcode Attributes -> rra[/hilite]

rra=”2″ Reattempt failed payments? Possible values: 0 = do NOT reattempt billing when/if a recurring payment fails; 1 or higher = yes, DO reattempt billing when/if a recurring payment fails. With PayPal® Pro integration, PayPal® will retry a maximum of 2 times whenever rra=”2″; after that, a Subscription would be terminated due to Max Failed Payments having been reached. With PayPal® Pro integration, the value of this attribute also configures Max Failed Payments. So a setting of rra=”2″ means that you allow a maximum of 2 failed payments.

I hope that helps.

Thanks, that helps a lot!

Cool. :)

It turns out that my rra parameter is already set to 1 or 2 (for PayPal standard or Pro).

But PayPal does let you set it higher than 2, or even set it to unlimited tries. It’s not very clear from the wording in the documentation is you can set rra=3 when using PayPal Pro, or if you’re limited to 2?

With PayPal® Pro integration, the value of this attribute also configures Max Failed Payments.

If you’re using PayPal Pro, you can set rra to 3 if you want.