monobank recurring payments for Shopify

Recurring payment — automatic deduction of funds from the client's card on a schedule without their involvement. The difference from a regular payment: the client authorizes the payment once (with 3D Secure), monobank saves the card token, and subsequent deductions are made using the token without the client's participation. This is the basis of subscription models: SaaS, Netflix-style services, subscription boxes, memberships, regular deliveries.

Three components: 1) a current account of an individual entrepreneur or LLC in monobank, 2) a signed recurring merchant agreement with monobank (agreed through the monobank business portal, takes 5–10 business days; TradeMinister helps to complete the process), 3) an active Shopify store on the Basic plan or higher. For Shopify Plus, advanced features are available: segmented subscriptions, cohort discounts, whitelabel dashboard.

Through tokenization, the store never receives or stores customers' card details. The first payment is processed on the monobank side (a secure form with 3D Secure), and after success, monobank returns a token to the store — a meaningless string like T123abc... that has no meaning outside monobank. Subsequent charges are made using the token. This ensures automatic PCI DSS compliance — the store does not handle cardholder data.

Daily, weekly, every 2 weeks, monthly, every 2 months, quarterly, every six months, annually. Custom schedules are also supported: for example, charging on the 1st and 15th of each month, or every first Monday of the month. Each subscription product can have its own schedule. Trial periods are supported (free period up to N days), as well as progressive pricing (first month 1 ₴, then 500 ₴/month).

If the customer's card has insufficient funds or is blocked, a retry logic is triggered: 3 charge attempts within 72 hours (after 6, 24, and 72 hours from the first failure). The customer receives an email notification asking them to top up the card or change the card in their personal account. If all 3 attempts fail, the subscription is automatically set to paused status until the customer changes the card or the store manager manually reactivates it.

The customer in the store's personal account (page /pages/subscriptions or /account) sees all active subscriptions with the dates of the next charges and a "Cancel" button. When canceling, the card token is invalidated on the monobank side via the DELETE API, and no further charges occur. Subscription pause is also supported (without canceling the token, with the ability to restore it with one click), card change (the customer authorizes a new card, the old one is invalidated), and plan change (upgrade/downgrade with proportional recalculation).

For SaaS products (subscription access to the service), subscription boxes (beauty boxes, food boxes, book clubs), memberships and private clubs, fitness clubs and studios (subscriptions), media with paid content, educational platforms (monthly courses), digital products (subscription licenses), regularly consumed goods (pet food, cosmetics, vitamins, coffee), and donation platforms. Not suitable for one-time purchases of large appliances or clothing — for those, regular acquiring or monobank installment payments are better.