Upgrade & downgrade subscriptions via payment links
Summary
Allow subscription upgrades and downgrades to be completed via a payment link, not only through the customer's saved payment method.
Current behavior
Today, when a customer upgrades or downgrades a plan, the change is charged automatically against the payment method already saved on the subscription. There is no way to route that plan change through a payment link.
Request
Support upgrade/downgrade via a payment link as well — i.e. generate a link the customer can open to review and confirm/pay for the new plan, rather than relying solely on an on-file, auto-charged payment method.
Why it matters
- Covers subscriptions where no payment method is saved or the saved one has expired/failed.
- Lets the customer explicitly review and authorize the new amount (useful for larger upgrades or region/bank flows that require re-authentication).
- Enables merchant- or sales-initiated plan changes where the customer completes payment themselves.
Notes
Complements the existing automatic (saved-payment-method) upgrade/downgrade flow — this is an additional path, not a replacement.
Captured by the team from roadmap planning.
5 Comments
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Really Waiting For This
Let me give more brief overview of the feature.
For upgrades and downgrades, customers will not go through the RBI mandate flow. Instead, they will be redirected to a checkout page for the updated prorated amount, where they can complete the payment directly.
This approach will bypass the mandate-based flow and help avoid the current 48-hour processing delay, ensuring a faster and smoother payment experience during upgrades and downgrades.
This is the scenario that is not working
- i created 2 products, 29 usd/month, 299 usd/year,
- user purchases 29 usd plan and after few days wants to purchase a yearly plan.
- I call change plan API with yearly plan product id, it throws error saying cannot proceed because amount is more than 15000 allowed limit.
this has to be fixed and given a response if a 2 factor authentication has to be done again while change a plan with an amount > 15000 so i can again open a mandate creation page
In paddle, I used to update the subscription and then simply open a update payment method page that used to see if the amount is > 15k then, simple payment method update should open the 3DS page to allow/create the mandate for that amount.
Or if you guys have stripe integration which i think you have, you can route txns < 15k for indian cards/upi through cashfree and use stripe for any amount more than that.
Hi Rahul and Venkatesh, thanks for the detailed writeup.
You've got it right. This is specific to Indian customers and comes down to RBI e-mandate rules: recurring auto-debits above ₹15,000 need fresh authentication, so an upgrade that crosses that limit can't ride the existing mandate.
The fix we're building is upgrade and downgrade via checkout link, so the customer re-authenticates, a mandate at the higher amount gets created, and the payment goes through. It's on our roadmap now. I'll keep this post updated.
Great, but i think a better solution is let the customer upgrade normally and open a update payment method modal and in that you can check if a mandate is pending 3ds then open a bank page
That’s how paddle do it as well