how can I add free days in Authorize.net ARB monthly subscription?

Question

I am using authorize.net ARB monthly subscription method, that is running fine.

I have a task to give first 7-Days free, and process payment after 7-Days.

That means if client does not want to continue subscription within 7-Days he can cancel his subscription and payment will not get deducted from his account.

I have looked into PDF documentation file and nothing can be found, please guide me how can I do that?

Answer 1

There's an argument called startDate in the XML request to create the subscription. If you set that to seven days in the future, the payment will not be processed until then. In the mean time, a subscription will still be created so you can cancel it early to avoid the payment entirely.

You should be able to find this in the documentation under ARBCreateSubscriptionRequest. In my copy of the pdf (which is a little bit old so it might be different now), startDate is documented on page 10 and page 5 mentions:

ARB subscriptions do not process transactions in real-time. A successful creation of an ARB subscription transaction is not an indicator that the subscription payments that process through your account will be successful. ARB subscription transactions process at approximately 2am PST on their scheduled payment dates. This means that the first scheduled transaction will not be sent to the customer's bank for authorization until approximately 2am PST on the start date that you specify upon creating the subscription in your account. If you create a subscription with a start date that equals the creation date, the first scheduled payment will not process until after 2am the following day. If you wish to validate your customer's payment information before creating their subscription in your account, please use one of the real-time transaction processing methods, such as the AIM (Advanced Integration Method).

The bolded section is important.