Subscription: Scheduled & Free Trial (Overview)

Breeze’s Scheduled & Free Trial Subscription features give merchants flexibility to manage subscription lifecycles beyond immediate billing. With these enhancements, merchants can:

Offer free trial periods before charging their customers.
Schedule future subscription start dates to align billing with migrations, campaigns, or deferred service activations.
Seamlessly combine both — start a subscription at a specific date after a trial period.

These features are fully integrated into Breeze’s subscription APIs, enabling zero-friction setup for merchants while maintaining compliance, risk, and billing automation handled by Breeze.

How It Works

Breeze securely collects and verifies the customer’s payment method during checkout, ensuring future recurring charges can be processed seamlessly. This initial setup marks the start of the customer’s subscription relationship with Breeze.

Depending on configuration, subscriptions can follow one of three paths:

Scenario	Description	Billing Behaviour
Free Trial Only	Customer starts immediately with a promotional period (e.g., 7 days free)	Breeze securely collects the customer’s payment method. The first billing occurs after the trial ends
Scheduled Subscription Only	Customer signs up now, but billing begins at a future date (e.g., product launch)	Breeze securely collects the customer’s payment method and begins billing at the specified start date
Free Trial + Scheduled Subscription	Customer signs up now, the trial starts at a scheduled future date, and billing begins after the trial period	Breeze securely collects the customer’s payment method and starts billing after the scheduled start date plus the trial duration

Sample Scenarios

Below are a few examples that illustrate how Breeze handles different combinations of free trial and scheduled start configurations.

🕐 Scenario 1: Free Trial Only

Today: 2025-05-01
Merchant: Creates a subscription with a 2-day free trial
Breeze: Generates a hosted payment page
Customer: Completes the card verification on 2025-05-01
Breeze: Charges the customer on 2025-05-03 (after the trial ends)

✅ Behavior:

The subscription becomes TRIALING immediately after signup, then transitions to ACTIVE once the first charge succeeds.

🕑 Scenario 2: Scheduled Subscription

Today: 2025-05-01
Merchant: Creates a subscription scheduled to start on 2025-05-04
Breeze: Generates a hosted payment page
Customer: Completes the card verification on 2025-05-01
Breeze: Starts charging the customer on 2025-05-04

✅ Behavior:

From 2025-05-01→ 2025-05-04, the subscription remains in the SCHEDULED state.
On 2025-05-04, once billing begins, the subscription transitions to ACTIVE.

🕒 Scenario 3: Free Trial + Scheduled Subscription

Today: 2025-05-01
Merchant: Creates a subscription scheduled for 2025-05-04 with a 2-day free trial
Breeze: Generates a hosted payment page
Customer: Completes the card verification on 2025-05-01
Breeze: Charges the customer on 2025-05-06 (after the scheduled start + trial duration)

✅ Behavior:

From 2025-05-01 → 2025-05-04, the subscription status is SCHEDULED.
From 2025-05-04 → 2025-05-06, it transitions to TRIALING.
On 2025-05-06, Breeze performs the first billing and marks the subscription ACTIVE.

Summary of State Transitions

Configuration	Card Verification	Status Flow	First Charge
Free Trial Only	Immediate	`TRIALING` -> `ACTIVE`	After trial duration
Scheduled Only	Immediate	`SCHEDULED` -> `ACTIVE`	On scheduled date
Scheduled + Trial	Immediate	`SCHEDULED` -> `TRIALING` -> `ACTIVE`	After scheduled date + trial duration

Key Takeaways

Enable both free trials and scheduled starts via a single API integration.
Card verification ensures valid payment credentials before activation.
Subscriptions automatically transition from SCHEDULED → TRIALING → ACTIVE.
Perfect for use cases like pre-launch offers or trial campaigns.
No need to manage your own billing timing or retry logic — Breeze handles it end-to-end.