Open ebay Apps Managed Billing Platform Guide Version 3.0
Table of Contents Introduction... 3 Overview... 3 Subscription Plans... 4 Types of Plans... 4 Charge Types for Billable Plans... 4 Credits, Discounts, and Payments... 9 Free Trial Plans... 10 Defining Plans... 11 Price Points and Service Levels... 13 Payment Methods... 13 Application Support... 14 General Application Support... 14 Technical Support... 14 Subscription & Billing Support... 14 Billing Cycles... 16 Account Statements and Billing Statements Examples... 19 Past Due Accounts... 22 Service Fees... 23 Appendix Billing Plan Definition Information... 24 Company/Billing Statement Information... 24 PayPal Pre-Approval Agreement Information... 24 Information Provided for a Plan... 26 Subscription Flow: Examples... 27 Start and End Dates... 32
Introduction ebay has taken the work out of billing management by providing a Managed Billing Platform (MBP). The MBP facilitates the billing of your subscribers or purchasers, and puts payments into your PayPal account. Developers who charge for Open ebay apps define billing plans that specify how users are charged. Billing plans can charge one-time fees or recurring subscription fees, or be usage-based. For information about Open ebay Apps, please see the Open ebay Apps product page. This guide is intended to describe the capabilities of the MBP, as well as answer frequently-asked questions. Overview After you upload your app s deployment descriptor, define its billing plan(s) in the Billing Plan Definition worksheet and submit them using a support request (through the Developers Program web site at http://developer.ebay.com). In upcoming months, the Developers Program site will enable you to define your subscription plans on the Embedded Applications tab. Unless your application is free, you must provide the following information about your application and billable plans. ebay account ID PayPal verified account email address and yearly payment limit Company address (Displayed on the billing statement sent to users). You also must provide information about your PayPal Pre-Approval Agreement, which is presented to an ebay user when they are subscribing to (or purchasing) your application. After your application is approved, and your billing plans are configured in the MBP, you can provide your subscription plan(s) to ebay users. When a user begins a subscription process, the user: Chooses from the list of your application s billing plans Agrees to ebay s Terms of Use and the Developer s Terms and Privacy Policy Provides payment information Each month, the MBP generates a billing statement for each subscriber. This occurs on the 1 st or the 15 th of the month, depending on the subscriber. The total bill is based on charges (recurring charges, one-time charge, usage), credits, and refunds. About 15 days after the user's bill, the MBP attempts to collect the total due, facilitating the payment directly between you ( the Developer ) and the ebay user, depositing the money into your PayPal Verified account. ebay does not under any circumstances receive the money owed to you by the ebay users who subscribe to your application. The MBP facilitates payments directly between an ebay user and your PayPal account, so you receive payment of approved transactions immediately. If a payment failure occurs, the ebay user is notified by email (and My Messages), and is asked to correct their payment information. Towards the end of 2010, service fees related to your Open ebay app will be calculated each month and debited from your PayPal account. You can view the details of the charges from within
the My Seller Account Summary section (in My ebay) of the ebay account you provided when you defined your plans. Subscription Plans This section describes types of plans and types of charges and credits, and explains some attributes of plans. Types of Plans The two types of plans are: 1. Billable: There are fees. Payment information is collected from users who subscribe. These plans have one or more attributes that define charges (see the section below). 2. Non-Billable (Free): These include limited-duration free plans, called promotional plans, and unlimited-duration free plans. Promotional plans, a recommended method for promoting your app, expire at a set time at which point the user s Start button is replaced by an Upgrade button and remains in the Active state for 30 days. For all free plans there is no fee and no billing statement. Payment information isn t collected from users who subscribe. These plans generally are defined the same way as billable plans, but don t have to be configured in the MBP. These plans can be set up, approved, and activated quickly. Charge Types for Billable Plans Billable plans must specify which charge types they use. Charge types include: Recurring fees (monthly or yearly subscription) Non-recurring fees (one-time subscription) Non-recurring setup fees Usage fees Also see Free Trials for a related requirement. Recurring Fees A recurring fee is a fee that is regularly charged. For recurring fees, the following are supported: 1. Monthly Fee Charged once a month, on the user s billing cycle. 2. Yearly Fee Charged once a year, on the user s billing cycle. In the case of a monthly recurring subscription fee, a subscriber is charged a prorated first month plus one month in advance. The first month s fee is prorated at the beginning of the subscription term based on the number of days subscribed and the daily rate for the current billing cycle. Recurring Fee Proration Calculations Daily rate = monthly rate/current billing cycle days (e.g. 28, 29, 30 or 31) Prorated amount = # of days subscribed in the first month X daily rate For example, if a user subscribes to a $19.95/month on 1/21/2010 with no free trial: a. User Billing Cycle 1 st Current Billing Cycle: 1/1/2010 1/31/2010 (31 Days) # of days subscribed in first month = 11 days
Daily rate = 19.95/31 days = 0.643548387 Prorated amount = 11 days X 0.643548387 = 7.08 (rounded up to 2 decimals) First month s charges would be 7.08 + 19.95 = $27.03 b. User Billing Cycle 16 th Current billing cycle: 1/16/2010 2/15/2010 (31 days) # of days subscribed in first month = 26 days Daily rate = 19.95/31 days = 0.643548387 Prorated amount = 26 days X 0.643548387 = 16.73 (rounded up to 2 decimals) First month s charges would be 16.73 + 19.95 = $36.68 Depending on when the user subscribed, and on the plan type, the amount in the first billing statement is usually higher than the amount in subsequent statements. See Billing Cycle Behavior for more information about these calculations. Prorated at End Attribute For a recurring fee plan, you can set an attribute that determines whether or not a recurring fee is prorated when a subscription is cancelled. Subscribers will see this attribute's setting during the sign-up flow. Non Prorated at End This type of recurring fee is non-prorated at the end of the subscription. The charge is initiated based on the term specified (monthly or yearly). However, when a user unsubscribes, the subscription end date is set in the future, and is aligned with the user s billing cycle. a. 1 st bill cycle End date set to the 1 st of the following month or 1 st of the following month and year for yearly subscriptions. b. 15 th bill cycle End date set to 16 th of the following month or 16 th of the following month and year for yearly subscriptions. The end date is set for the following month based on the day of the subscription start date, so that a user who cancels within the first month is obliged to pay for a full month. Here are some rules that govern unsubscription from plans that are non prorated at end. 1. The user can unsubscribe at anytime. However, the user's subscription will remain in the Active state, and the application will remain usable until the end of the current term. 2. The user will see a "Pending Cancellation" message on the Applications Tab, along with the date the subscription will end. 3. No cancellation credit will be issued. 4. If the user unsubscribes during the free trial period, their subscription will be cancelled immediately. 5. In the User Management tool on the Embedded Applications tab the user status will be Cancel Pending.
6. If the user wants to end the subscription immediately you can use the User Management tool to change the status to Cancel Immediately. The cancellation will occur as it would for a plan that specified the Prorated at End attribute. 7. Example Screen Shot - Pending Cancellation: In the sign-up flow, in the pricing details section, the attribute is displayed as Recurring Fee (monthly) or Recurring Fee (yearly). Note: A user also sees the words "Fee is not prorated" directly beneath the charge amount. Prorated at End The final charge is initiated based on the term specified (monthly or yearly). When a user unsubscribes, the subscription end date is set to the current date, and the subscription is cancelled immediately. 1. User can unsubscribe at anytime, and use of the application will be ended immediately. 2. A cancellation credit shall be applied. User must call to request a credit balance refund. A Recurring Prorated at End fee displays in the sign-up flow as Recurring Fee (monthly) or Recurring Fee (yearly) in the pricing details section. Non-Recurring Fee This is a one-time fee, billed on the user s first billing cycle. This fee can be used to charge a user once during the subscription term. The fee is displayed in the sign-up flow as One Time Fee in the pricing details section. Non-Recurring Set up Fee Same as a Non-Recurring Fee, but indicates that the fee is related to setup. This fee is displayed in the sign-up flow as Setup Fee, in the pricing details section. Usage Fee A fee based on usage of the application. If you use this fee attribute, your plan is a usage-based plan. This fee attribute can be used when users are charged based on their activity. Examples of usage plans include: Label and shipping applications (charged per label printed) CRM applications (charged per seat of access) Tiered pricing ($5 for units, $6 for 0 units, etc.) When configuring Usage Fee-based plans, a developer can provide subscribers additional details about pricing in an additional information field that supports some HTML tags such as <b>, <i>, <u>, <ul>, <ol>. Subscribers will see this information in the sign-up flow, in the pricing details section.
Usage records are sent to the MBP via the addusage API and are charged based on the currency amount specified in the request provided by the developer. Usage charge type transactions can be charged in two ways. 1. Usage billed at billing cycle: usage records will be stored on the user s account, and usage charges will be included in the total of the subscriber's next billing statement. 2. Usage charged immediately: usage records submitted with the immediatepayment flag set to true in the addusage request will be charged at the time of the addusage request and, if successful, will be recorded on the user's account activity in two separate line items. The first line item will show the usage charge and the second will show the corresponding payment. NOTE: Usage can be sent to the MBP within the free trial period and after the cancellation date. For usage sent to MBP after the cancellation date, the usage transaction date must be before the cancellation date and the immediatepayment flag cannot be set. Non-Plan Usage Fee This charge type and category is reserved for applications that include "pass-through" fees such as postage, shipping fees, and shipping insurance. A developer can only charge for non-plan usage when the pass-through fee charged to the subscriber is equal to or less than other commercially published pricing for the same type of product or service. For example, published pricing to ship a 1lb package via Priority Mail is $4.95. A developer can use non-plan usage to charge a subscriber for a similar postage purchase within their application only if the subscriber is charged $4.95 or less. Please contact DTS or your ebay representative if you have further questions or to determine if your usage-based fee is eligible to be charged as non-plan usage. When configuring a Non-Plan Usage fee-based plan, a developer can provide additional details about the plan s pricing in an additional information field that supports some HTML tags such as <b>, <i>, <u>, <ul>, <ol>. Subscribers will see this information in the sign-up flow, in the pricing details section. Non-Plan Usage records are sent to the MBP via the addusage API and are charged based on the currency amount specified in the addusage request. Non-Plan Usage charge type transactions can only be charged in one way: Non-Plan Usage charged immediately: can only submitted with the immediatepayment flag set to true, and will be charged at the time of the addusage request. If successful, the charge and payment are recorded in the user's account activity in two separate line items. NOTE: Usage can be sent to the MBP within the free trial period. Usage Billed Usage billed is a true-or-false attribute that can be set on each charge type. It designates whether not you will use the addusage API to charge the user. When Usage billed is set to "true, you can manage when to collect charges.
By default, Usage and Non-Plan Usage charge types are set as Usage billed. However, if you want to control when to charge the subscriber a setup fee, a one-time fee, or the recurring fee, you should set those charge types as true for Usage billed. Submitting Usage Billed Transactions with the addusage API Usage billed transactions sent in the addusage API are validated according to the following rules: The plan for which usage is being submitted must have one or more charge type attributes that are set to Usage billed. The charge type being sent in the API call must be configured in the plan and must be set to Usage billed. The user must be subscribed to the exact planid provided in the API call. The user must not be in the free trial period. The transaction time specified in the API call must fall within the user's subscription dates. Please see addusage API. Charge Types When usage records are sent in the addusage API, a charge type must be assigned for each record. Usage activity is divided into groups that define whether a service fee is charged and whether ebay covers the payment processing fee. The table below defines the supported Charge Types: Charge Type Billed at Billing cycle Charged Immediately Service Fee Charged ebay Pays Processing Fee Recurring or Recurring Prorated at End NRC (One Time Charge) NRCSetup (Setup Fee) Usage Y Y 20% Y Non-Plan Usage N Y TBD N IMPORTANT NOTE - A developer is not currently charged an Open ebay Apps service fee on non-plan usage transactions. However, a developer is charged normal PayPal fees. Please see your PayPal Fee Schedule for PayPal fees incurred for processing payments. Examples of Subscription Plan Displays Here s an example of an application that has two plans. The first plan has a Recurring Fee, a Setup Fee, and Usage Fee. The second plan has a 15 day Free Trial and a Recurring Fee.
Credits, Discounts, and Payments Use the Open ebay Subscription Service charge types to credit your users accounts. Credits Available credits include the following. CreditOneTimeCharge This is a credit to a one-time subscription charge or setup fee. CreditSubscriptionCharge This is a credit to a recurring subscription charge. This type of credit can be manually added by an Open ebay representative, or automatically generated by the Managed Billing Platform, for example upon cancellation of a prorated plan, to credit already-paid charges covering the period after the cancellation date. CreditUsageCharge This credit restores some or all of a usage charge. CreditStatement This is an account-level credit statement.
CreditReversal A credit reversal cancels a credit given to a subscriber, and restores the amount of the credit to you. Discount This type is reserved for future use. PaymentRefund This type represents a refund for a payment where money has been refunded to the subscribers PayPal account. PaymentReversal This type is used when there is a failure in a subscriber s monthly payment. The subscriber s account will then contain both a payment and a payment reversal to record that the payment attempt failed. Free Trial Plans All Open ebay Apps must offer a free trial period (minimum 7 days), have a completely free option, or have a free plan. Free Trial Period If your application offers a free trial period, it must be a minimum of 7 days. This option should be offered on at least one of your plans, so users can try your application for free. The plan with the free trial must provide the user with the application s primary feature-set. During the free trial, the user is not charged for subscription fees associated with the plan. If the user does not unsubscribe before the trial period ends, they are charged the subscription fees on the first billing cycle after the expiration of the free trial period, or immediately after the free trial period if you are submitting the subscription fees with the addusage API. Cancelling During Free Trial Period If a user unsubscribes during a free trial period, their subscription will be cancelled immediately and they will not be charged any subscription fees. Free Trial Behavior To reduce the possibility of abuse, a user can only receive one free trial period per application. The user will see the following message on the Choose your subscription plan page:
If your application has four billing plans, each with a free trial, and a user subscribes to plan 1 and uses the free trial option, and then unsubscribes, the user will not be able to choose the free trial option when subscribing to plan 2. Remaining Free Trial Notification A user is notified of their remaining free trial period on the Applications tab where they launch the application. If there is a free trial period remaining, the number of days remaining will appear under the plan name as shown in the example screen shot below: Defining Plans Plan Lifecycle Each plan you set up will go through a specific lifecycle, with defined states. The lifecycle is used to track the setup and configuration process from the time you create the plan to the time it is fully configured and active in the MBP. After you create your billing plans, they are in the Stored state. While in this state, you can test how the plans will be displayed in the subscription flow and you can subscribe to your plans without going through the payment selection pages or being charged. In addition, you can update the plan information and attributes as many times as you wish. When you are satisfied with your plan definition, you can put in a request to have your plans reviewed and configured in the MBP. Please refer to the Offering Subscription Plans section of the Users Guide for details on submitting your plans. If a member of the Developer s Program discovers an error in the information you have provided, you will be notified and asked to correct the information before the plans are fully configured in the MBP. While your application and plans are in a non-active state, they are viewable only by the ebay user IDs listed in the Permissions tag of the application s deployment descriptor, and by ebay Administrators. After your plans have been fully configured in the MBP, ebay will set the lifecycle state to Active, mark them as hidden, and notify you that your billing plans are ready for your final verification. ebay will ask you to confirm that you have successfully completed and verified your billing plans. Go through the subscription flow for each plan before making it visible to the public. Please refer to the Production Verification section below. Production Verification Once your new billing plan(s) are configured in the production systems, you will be notified and asked to perform production verification. During this stage, your plans are set to hidden so that you and ebay administrators can view, subscribe, and test. Other users cannot see hidden plans. ebay will ask you to confirm that you have successfully completed and verified your billing plans. Production verification should include the following:
1. Subscribe/unsubscribe to your free plan to test subscription flow and integration only. 2. Subscribe/unsubscribe to your new billable plan(s) to make sure they look correct. 3. Review the application name, plan name, description and rate. 4. Ensure that the plan includes the expected components (subscription, one time charge, setup fee or usage). 5. Do not use the PayPal account that has been set up to receive payments for your application. The PayPal payment will always fail in this case. 6. Confirm you get the right external plan IDs in your addsubscriber request and that your subscriptions go into Active/Subscribed state. 7. Process a test "one-time payment" transaction. This important step helps confirm that the plan s configuration in the Managed Billing Platform is set up correctly to receive payments from your subscribers. Note: Be sure you are not in your free trial period before you test a one time payment. To force your subscription to come out of the free trial period, unsubscribe and resubscribe to any plan of your application. Follow these steps to test the one-time payment process after you have subscribed to your application: 1. Go to My ebay. You will be asked to sign in. Login using your test account. 2. Click the "Account" tab, and then click the "Seller Account" link on the left side of the page. (My ebay -> Account -> Seller Account) 3. Select your application account from the "Account ID:" drop down list 4. Scroll down the page and click the "make a one-time payment" link which is located in the Payment method section. 5. Follow the instructions on each page to complete the payment. Note: We recommend making a one-time payment of $1.00 or less for this part of the testing If you do not see your application listed in the drop-down, or cannot see the option to make a one-time payment, please contact your ebay representative or DTS. If your plan includes usage, then process a usage test. Test both immediate payment and billing payment. 1. Ensure that the addusage API returns a success message. 2. Ensure that the usage transaction is displayed immediately in the Account Activity Page. (My ebay > My Account > Seller Account > Account Activity) 3. If your usage transaction was marked for immediate payment, ensure that the PayPal payment displays immediately in the Account Activity Page. 4. Ensure that the PayPal payment is passed from your sender PayPal account to your receiver PayPal account and the PayPal fees are accurate. 5. Ensure that the PayPal fees for Non Plan usage are charged to your PayPal receiver account 6. Ensure that PayPal fees for Subscription or Plan usage are NOT charged to your PayPal receiver account. They should be charged to ebay. After you complete your testing and you are happy with the results, set your plans to visible. Note: Your application must be approved before users can subscribe to it. Show/Hide plans After your billing plans have been configured and enabled, the MBP s show/hide feature enables you to show or hide any plan. You can set a flag to prevent a plan from showing up in the
subscription flow for end-users. You may want to do this if you have set up multiple plans with different price points and you want to test which plans have the best conversion. After your plans are fully configured and set to Active, ebay sets your plans to hidden for testing. You must unhide (or show) your plans for them to appear in the subscription flow. As noted above, when your plans are hidden you can do production verification without showing your plans to the public. Price Points and Service Levels Price points Because of the lead time needed to review, configure and verify new billing plans, you may want to submit multiple plans (initially), containing different price points. After they are configured and active, you can use the show/hide feature to control whether they are available to new users. By setting up multiple plans this way, you can test the sign-up rate for different price points and determine which plan is the most effective for your business. Service levels You may want to set up multiple billing plans if your application offers different service levels exposing different capabilities or limitations. For example, you may want to create a basic plan level at one price that enables certain features, and an advanced plan level, at a higher price, that enables all the features of the basic plan, plus a few more features. For each billing plan, you define an externalplanid that is sent to your application in the addsubscriber call (of the OEPI interface) when a user subscribes to the plan. When you receive an addsubscriber call, you can use the externalplanid to set the user at the appropriate service level. Payment Methods When users subscribe to one of your billable plans they are prompted to choose a default payment method to pay for the subscription fees. The initial release of the MBP supports the following payment method: PayPal PayPal requires the user to establish a pre-approved payment agreement, to allow the MBP to deduct subscription fees from the user s PayPal account during the term of the subscription. The following maximums on pre-approved payment agreements apply: Term: A maximum of 12 months is allowed. The agreement expires at the end of the term and the user will need to establish a new agreement for an additional term. This action will be managed from within ebay and the user will be instructed on how to establish a new pre-approved payment agreement. Total Amount of all Payments: When creating the first billing plan for your application you need to set the maximum amount of all payments for the term. The maximum amount cannot exceed $10,000. It is recommended that you set your maximum amount based on 15 months of your highest priced billing plan. Please make sure to factor in usage transactions. The agreement will become invalid if this maximum amount is reached before the agreements term expiration. Like a pre-paid credit card or stored value card, each time a payment is processed against a pre-approved payment agreement, the available balance is reduced by the amount of the payment. Once the balance is depleted, the agreement is no
longer valid. Once this occurs, the user will need to establish a new agreement for an additional term. This action will be managed from within ebay and the user will be instructed on how to establish a new pre-approved payment agreement. PayPal s Confirmed Pre-Approved Payment Page: Currently, this PayPal-hosted page will display the following information to the user when they are subscribing to your application: Field Display Purpose Value Name: Start: End: Memo: Displays the name of the PayPal API caller. Displays the start date of the preapproval agreement. Displays the end date of the preapproval agreement. Displays information pertaining to the Developer and the application. Initially set to a generic value of Developer Applications. This may change in future PayPal releases to display the Developer s name. By default, this will show the date of subscription. Typically the current date. This value will be set based on the Term length of the pre-approval agreement set by the developer. Typically the term will be set to 12 months, thus the end date will be set to a date 12 months in the future. This value will be set to display the Developer Name and application name, separated with a space. Additional payment methods will be supported in the future. Application Support General Application Support Application support will be provided by the developer. If a user contacts ebay Customer Service with a question related to a developer s embedded application, ebay will direct the user to contact the developer directly and will provide the user with the appropriate contact information. ebay Customer Service will place a note on the user s account recording the support incident. Technical Support Technical support will be provided by the developer. Should a user contact ebay Customer Service with a question related to a developer s Open ebay app, ebay will direct the user to contact the developer directly and will provide the user with the appropriate contact information. ebay Customer Service will place a note on the user s account recording the support incident. Subscription & Billing Support Subscription and Billing support will be provided by the developer. Should a user contact ebay Customer Service with a question related to their subscription or billing statement fee-related charges of a developer s Open ebay app, ebay will direct the user to contact the developer directly and will provide the user with the appropriate contact information. ebay Customer Service will place a note on the user s account recording the support incident. If a user contacts ebay Customer Service a second time related to the same inquiry and suggests that the developer did not appropriately address their issue, ebay shall have the right, at its sole discretion, to issue a courtesy credit, on behalf of the developer. In addition, when this occurs, ebay Customer Service will notify the ebay Developer s Program. Once a billing inquiry is
escalated, the developer s application may be temporarily suspended until the user s issue is resolved. Developers can use the following support tools to assist their subscribers with their subscription and billing related inquiries: Cancel Immediately As noted above, if a user is subscribed to a plan that has a recurring fee with a non prorate at end attribute, and they unsubscribe, the system will assign their subscription end date in the future (a pending cancellation). Some users may contact the developer to request that their account be cancelled immediately. A developer can force an immediate cancellation of a subscription through a feature at http://developer.ebay.com. 1. Click on My Account at the top of the page 2. Click on the Embedded Applications Tab 3. Scroll down to the Production Applications section where it lists the active subscribers. 4. Click on the # of users to view the User Management tool. 5. To view a particular user, enter the user id in the filter section and click the Search button. 6. To view all users, just click on the Search button with no filter criteria. 7. To change the users status from cancel pending to cancel immediately, click on the current status. 8. This will enable a drop down, select the cancel immediately option and click on Submit 9. The status will changed to cancel. Because the MBP bills in advance for subscription fees, if a subscription is cancelled early, the MBP will likely calculate a cancellation credit on the user's next billing cycle. Please contact ebay if the user should not be issued a credit, or if they were issued a refund outside of the MBP. Payment failures Payment failures can result from the following: 1. PayPal account does not have sufficient funds 2. PayPal pre-approval agreement has been revoked, expired, or reached its maximum dollar threshold 3. PayPal email address is invalid 4. A time-out or system error occurred when attempting to collect the payment When a payment failure occurs, the MBP will email the subscriber (See Handling Past Due Accounts below). Some users may contact the developer to seek assistance. The user can correct the payment failure by logging into their account and making a one-time payment. If their PayPal account has been removed from their ebay account due to a "hard payment failure" such as item 2 in the list above, the user must first re-add a new valid PayPal account, then make a one-time payment. Billing Statement APIs Should the user have questions about specific charges on their billing statement, there are two APIs (getbillingstatements and getbillingrecords) that can be used to retrieve a subscriber's billing statement information. Refer to the Performing Billing Operations section of the Users Guide for more information about these calls. Credits
The credit API will be available in 2010. If you need to issue credits to a subscriber, please contact ebay s billing support. Send an email to appsbillingissues@ebay.com with the following information: o o o o o o o ebay user id Subscription id Fee Description and date (e.g. Subscription fee from 1/15/09 1/31/09, Usage fee 1/3/2010) Amount of Fee (for validation purposes) Requested Credit Amount Credit Reason Additional text to display with credit Refunds The refund API will be available later in 2010. If you need to issue a refund to a subscriber, please contact ebay s billing support. In order to issue a refund for a fee, please ensure the fee has already been credited. Send an email to appsbillingissues@ebay.com with the following information: o o o o o ebay user ID Subscription ID Requested refund amount Refund reason Additional text to display with the refund Billing Cycle Behavior Many billing questions relate to the charges that appear on a subscriber's first billing statement. Refer to the Billing Cycle Behavior section below for information on how the MBP calculates billing charges. Billing Cycles There are two billing cycles each month. If billing cycle is abbreviated as BC, the two billing cycles can be referred to as BC 0 and BC 15. Each ebay user is assigned to BC 0 or BC 15. The billing cycle is used to generate the billing statement and calculate what amount is due. About 15 days after the billing cycle, the MBP collects the payment for that billing cycle. BC 0 - Billing statement is generated around the 1st of the month; payment collection date is around the 15th of each month. BC15 - Billing statement is generated around the 15th of the month; payment collection date is around 28-30th of each month. There is a lag between when the MBP generates the billing statement and when the payment process attempts to collect the money for that statement. After we run the collections/payment process, the money is moved directly from the user to the developer's PayPal account immediately. There is also a delay between when a user comes out of a free trial and when the first billing statement is created for that user. For example, if a user comes out of their free trial on the 3rd of the month, but they are in billing cycle 0, their first billing statement won't be calculated until
the beginning of the following month. If they are in billing cycle 15, then their first billing statement will be about 12 days later around the 15th of the month. Here are some examples of how the MBP will calculate the total due from a user subscribed to monthly and yearly subscription plans. Monthly Recurring Plan Billing Cycle (15): 15 th of the month. Seller subscribes to a monthly subscription billing plan on March 23, 2009 with 1 month of free trial. The free trial ends on April 23, 2009 Monthly subscription rate is $19.95. When the statement is generated on 5/15/09, the subscription is billed from 4/23/09 till 5/15/09 and then 5/16/09 6/15/09. The charges on the statement will appear as follows: Invoice Period 3/16/09-4/15/09 Statement Date: 5/1 (Period 4/16/09-5/15/09) Monthly and One-Time Fees Date Fee Type Amount (USD) May 15 May 15 {Application Name} {Plan Name}: Subscription Fee (April 23, 2009 May 15, 2009) {Application Name} {Plan Name}: Subscription Fee (May 16, 2009 June 15, 2009) 14.97 19.95 Yearly Recurring Plan
Billing Cycle (0): End of the month. Seller subscribes to a yearly subscription billing plan on April 12, 2009 with 7 days of free trial. The free trial ends on April 19, 2 Yearly subscription rate is $ and the plan starts on April 19, 2009 When the statement is generated on, the subscription is billed from 4/19/09 till 4/30/10. The charges on the statement will appear as follows: Statement Date: 09 (Period - 4/30/09) Subscription and One-Time Fees Date (PDT) Fee Type Amount (USD) Apr 30 {Application Name} {Plan Name}: Subscription Fee (April 19, 2009 April 30, 2010) $ Timing of Revenue That You Receive from Subscriptions Revenue from subscribers occurs after your first billing plan is public and active. There is an inherent delay between the release of your plan, the end of the trial period, and the start of the next available billing cycle. Thus, your subscription revenue may not be received until a minimum of 2 weeks after the length of your free trial period is added to your release date. Also, in the first billing cycle, you will only see revenue collected from half of your new subscribers, depending on their billing period. There are some exceptions, noted below. Example of calculating the earliest date you d receive the first subscription revenue: Plan release date: September 10 th Free trial period: 7 days Add 7 days to the plan s release date: September 17 th Observe the next billing statement date: October 1 st Add two weeks to find the next billing collection date: October 15 th In this example, the earliest possible date you would see revenue from your plan is October 15 th, approximately 4 ½ weeks after plan release. At this point, you should see payment from all balance-due subscribers who are in Billing Cycle 0 (BC 0) who subscribed before October 1 st. Balance due from other subscribers in Billing Cycle 15 (BC 15) who subscribed before October 15 th, will be collected on October 30 th. Exception
The exception to this example would be for subscribers who have previously subscribed to your application, and are no longer eligible for the free trial period. For subscribers in BC15 who subscribe between September 10 th and September 15 th, revenue would appear on their statement for September 15 th and be collected for October 1 st. Previously-subscribed users in BC0 would still be billed on October 1 st and collected on October 15 th. Other Considerations Depending on the user s subscription date in relation to their billing cycle, it may be as much as six weeks before an initial payment is first recorded after their free trial ends. If your plan is billed monthly and you have a 30-day free trial period, this can result in a delay of as much as 10 weeks (4 weeks of free trial + maximum 6 week delay). Account Statements and Billing Statements Examples This section explains and shows screenshots of billing flows that your subscribers will see. Seller Account Select Application Account Example screenshot of Seller Account section in My ebay, where the user selects a specific account from an Account ID drop down list. In the example below, a user has subscribed to the Terapeak application.
Account Status All Activity Example screenshot of when a user visits the Seller Account section of My ebay, selects a specific account from a drop-down list provided, and views their account activity for that application. In the example below, the user is shown usage activity related to the Terapeak application. Billing Statement Example screenshot of when a user visits the Seller Account section of My ebay, selects a specific account from a drop-down list provided, and views one of the billing statements for that application. In the example below, the user is shown payments, credits, and subscription charges related to the Ah Text application.
Past Due Accounts The MBP has the following features to manage payment failures and past due accounts: 1. If the MBP encounters a payment failure during the collection process, it will send out an email notification that notifies the user and prompts them to make a payment. See Payment Failure Email Notification below. 2. The MBP will move a user's application subscription state to Suspended if the account balance is greater than the defined threshold and more than X days have elapsed since the last billing statement. See MBP System Configuration below for more information. When a subscription is in suspended state, the following applies: 3. The user will not be able to start the application. 4. The user will see a notification on the Applications tab stating their subscription is currently suspended and they will be prompted to make a payment. 5. If the user makes a payment and brings their account balance current, the system will update the subscription state back to Active within 5 minutes. 6. Example screen shot when a user's subscription is suspended. The "make a payment" link takes the user through the make a one-time payment flow for the developer's application (also available from within the Seller Account section of My ebay). 7. The MBP will change a user's application subscription state to Cancelled if the account balance is greater than the defined threshold and more than Y days have elapsed since the last billing statement. MBP SystemConfiguration: X = 18 days Y = 22 days Threshold = $1 Payment Failure Email Notification When a payment failure like this occurs, our MBP emails the end-user (and sends a message to My Messages) to let them know there was a problem with their payment, and directs them to go online and make a one-time payment. The email message will state the following: -- Payment Failure Email Begin -- Developer: {Developer Name} Application: {Application Name} Account ID: (User Account ID} Outstanding Payment Due: ${Amount Due} ***This is an automatically generated email. Please do not reply.*** --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ebay sent this message to {ebay User Name} ({ebay UserID}). Your registered name is included to show this message originated from ebay.
Learn more: http://pages.ebay.com/help/confidence/name-userid-emails.html --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We regret to inform you that your {Application Name} fees have not been paid. {More descriptive reason why the payment failure occurred...} To keep your account current and avoid it becoming past due, please make an immediate payment on your amounts due. To make a payment: 1. Go to My ebay. You will be asked to sign in. 2. Click the "Account" tab, and then click the "Seller Account" link on the left side of the page. 3. Select {Application Name} from the drop-down menu. 4. Click the "one-time payment" link and follow the instructions for making a payment. --Payment Failure Email End -- Service Fees You receive 80% of the revenue generated from fee-based subscriptions or purchases of your application. There is a 20% service fee charged on all fee-based plans and are inclusive of your payment processing fees (PayPal, credit card, etc.). The service fee is debited from your PayPal Account on a monthly basis. For any subscription-related charges where a service fee is applied, your PayPal fees are paid by ebay. For any non subscription-related charges where a service fee is not applied, PayPal fees are paid by the developer. An example of a non subscription-related charge is authorization of payment for actual postage costs. There are no Service Fees charged for free applications.
Appendix Billing Plan Definition Information Company/Billing Statement Information A developer will need to provide the following company information for the billing statement notifications: Developer's ebay Account PayPal email Address Your ebay account (login). This is the account where you will receive your Developer Merchant statement that will show all your subscriber charges and revenue share fees Your PayPal email address. Payments/Refunds from your subscribers will appear in this PayPal Account All the information below will show up on the billing statements of the people who subscribe to your app Company Logo URL Company Legal Name Company Legal Entity Country of Origin Additional Company Info (for EU companies only) Address 1, Address 2, City, State Zip This logo will be displayed on billing statement your subscribers will see Provide your Company's Legal Name. This value is shown in Subscription flow and on the billing statement for paid plans. Where the company has legal presence. Values will be ALL, USD, EU, ROW (rest of world) Legal Form, Entity's Registration #, Business License #, VAT #, Amt of Legal Entity's capital Assets The official address associated to the company identified Customer Service Phone Customer Service Email Billing Statement Announcement Billing Statement Notice Helpful Link 1 (Link Text) Helpful Link 1 (URL) Helpful Link 2 (Link Text) Helpful Link 2 (URL) Helpful Link 3 (Link Text) Helpful Link 3 (URL) Email address only (Optional) Any Marketing Message you would like to appear on all your statements for all subscribers. (Optional) Any Service or Legal Related Message you would like to appear on all your statements for all subscribers. Anchor Text 1 (i.e. "Please Visit Our Website") HREF value 1 (http://www.developer.com) Anchor Text 2 (i.e. "Please Visit Our Website") HREF value 2 (http://www.developer.com) Anchor Text 3 (i.e. "Please Visit Our Website") HREF value 3 (http://www.developer.com) PayPal Pre-Approval Agreement Information
A developer will need to provide the following information that will be displayed on the PayPal Pre-Approval Agreement page during the subscription flow: Currency Term/Length of Pre-Approval Pre-Approval Max Value of all Payments USD (Only supported currency) The number of months the PayPal Pre-Approval Agreement should be valid for. This value cannot exceed 12 months per current PayPal requirements. Maximum amount user can be charged over lifetime of pre-approval agreement. Once reached, agreement will be expired by PayPal. Max amount is $10000 USD
Information Provided for a Plan A developer will need to provide the following information for each plan defined: Developer Application ID Developer Application Name Developer Plan ID Plan Name (displays) Plan Description (displays) Plan Start Date Plan End Date ebay Site ID Plan Type Recurring Charge Recurring Period Pro-rate at End Free Trial Period Non Recurring Fee (Setup) Non Recurring Fee (One Time Price Plan) Example: myapp.mycompany.com This is the id= value from the top of your deployment descriptor This is the applicationname value from your deployment descriptor. This value will show on the Billing Statement next to the Plan Name. Example: {Application Name} - {Plan Name} This is a developer-assigned Plan ID that will be passed in the <externalid> field of the addsubscriber call to notify Developer of a new subscription. Shows in Subscription Flow. Displays when user is subscribing to a specific subscription plan of an application. Also shows up on Billing Statement next to your Application Name. Should be different than your Application Name. Billing Statement will display: {Application Name} - {Plan Name} Extended plan description information to provide additional information about plan. Shows in Subscription Flow only Value should be today's date if plan should start immediately upon being configured and approved in the system Used to control when the plan should no longer be offered in the subscription flow. Leave blank by default. Only the US Site (site 0) is currently supported Non-Billable, Billable. If free plan, choose non-billable. If plan will have some charge associated to it, choose billable If your plan has a recurring charge, enter the amount in this field. SiteID defined will determine currency of plan. Monthly or Yearly Y or N. For Recurring Plans ONLY. "N" is the Only pro-ration option supported initially. (n = stop app at end of sub term y = stop app immediately) In number of days. Minimum 7 Day Free Trial (Required by Developer's Program) Provide if your billing plan has a one-time setup fee. Setup Fees are collected at billing cycle time, not at time of sign-up. Provide if your billing plan has a one-time fee. Example, $50 charged once for the lifetime of the subscription. One-time Fees are collected at billing cycle time, not at time of sign-up Usage Y or N. If your plan is usage-based or includes usage-based charges, indicate Y. Usage Category Subscription Charge, Plan Usage, Non-Plan Usage If Usage was set to Y, indicate what category types of usage your
application uses. Multiple categories ok. Subscription Charge Use if you will send in your subscription fee usage record via the Usage API. Plan Usage Use if you will send in account activity usage records via the Usage API. Non-Plan Usage Use if you will require authorizing payment for non-plan related usage (i.e. postage fees) activity. This value can only be used when the immediate payment flag is set to true. Usage Details Field used to provide more detail about usage charges. Some HTML Allowed: <b> or <strong> Bold, <em> or <i> Italics, <u> Underline, <ol> Ordered List, <ul> Un-ordered list Subscription Flow: Examples
Start and End Dates You can specify start and end dates for your billing plans. Setting these dates lets you control when the plans show up in the subscription flow. If you set the start date before the plan is fully configured in the MBP, the plan will not appear in the subscription flow. After submitting your plans for ebay review, you can request an estimated date when your plans will be available for subscription. You can use the start date to set a future start date, well in the future, e.g. six months from now. If you have a created one plan to be displayed in place of another, you should set the end date of your original plan to one day before the start date of the second plan. The end date enables you to set an end date of when the plan will show up in the subscription flow. If you set an end date, and users are subscribed, they will continue to be subscribed and active in the plan. This value only controls whether the plan shows up in the subscription flow. In most cases, you should leave your plan end date empty. 2009 2010 ebay Inc. All rights reserved. ebay and the ebay logo are registered trademarks of ebay Inc. All other brands are the property of their respective owners.