How to offer payment plans to customers

Approx. 5 minutes

Payment plans are an important tool for businesses to improve sales. It’s something customers today expect businesses to offer as a standard. Businesses that don’t, risk losing customers to competitors that do offer payment plans.

A payment plan lets a customer pay for something in parts instead of all at once: a deposit today, then the rest over weeks or months. Offered well, it brings in buyers who couldn’t pay upfront, without you handing your customers or your margin to a lender or a BNPL company.

In short: to offer payment plans, set the deposit, number of payments and schedule, write simple terms, and use software that charges each payment automatically and chases failed ones. With Paythen you can do this through your own Stripe account for 2% per payment, plus Stripe fees.

Ready to offer payment plans now? See how Paythen works.

What is a customer payment plan? Jump to section
Why offer payment plans to customers? Jump to section
How to offer payment plans, step by step Jump to section
Running payment plans yourself vs using a BNPL provider Jump to section
Offering payment plans with Paythen Jump to section
Frequently asked questions Jump to section
Summary Jump to section

What is a customer payment plan?

A customer payment plan (also called an installment plan or split payment) is an agreement to pay a set total in scheduled parts. The business offering it sets the terms and collects the payments itself, usually by charging the customer’s saved card on each due date.

That is different from:

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) providers such as Afterpay, Klarna or Affirm, who pay you upfront, lend to the customer and set their own terms and fees.
Customer financing, where a finance company approves and lends a larger amount, often with interest. See our customer financing guide.

With your own payment plan, no one approves the customer and there’s no credit or interest unless you add a fee. You get paid as they pay.

Why offer payment plans to customers?

More people can buy. A $2,000 course becomes ten payments of $200. It works across courses and certifications, events and travel, services billed in stages, and jewellery and other high-value items, and with no approval or credit check, every customer who can pay by card can choose the plan.
Fewer abandoned checkouts on higher-priced products and services.
Predictable cash flow, much like recurring revenue.
You keep the customer relationship. Your brand, your emails, your terms.
Room to upsell over the life of the plan.

How to offer payment plans, step by step

1. Set the deposit, number of payments and schedule

The three choices that shape every plan:

Deposit: a larger upfront payment lowers your risk. Some businesses let the customer choose the deposit.
Number of payments and frequency: weekly, fortnightly, monthly or a custom interval.
Schedule type: payments that start when the customer signs up, or payments on fixed dates for everyone, which suits events, cohorts and intakes where the full amount must be in before a start date.

Keep the plan short enough that it finishes before, or soon after, you deliver.

2. Decide the price of the plan

You can charge the same total as paying in full, add a small payment plan fee to cover costs and risk, or offer a discount for paying upfront. Showing both options side by side (“pay in full or pay over time”) lets the customer choose.

3. Write simple terms

State the total, each amount and date, what happens if a payment fails, whether customers can pay early, and your cancellation and refund rules. Show these at checkout and in the confirmation email.

4. Plan for missed payments

This is the main risk of running your own plans. Reduce it with:

Reminders a few days before each payment.
Automatic retries and an email asking the customer to update their card when a payment fails.
A page where customers can see what they’ve paid and owe, pay early and change their card without contacting you.
A deposit that covers your costs, and delivery tied to payments where that makes sense.

Paythen does all of this for you. Reminders, retries, failed-payment emails and the customer page run automatically on every plan, and you set the deposit or choose a Wait for it plan when you create the plan.

5. Choose how you’ll collect the payments

You can collect payments manually (invoices or charging cards yourself), set them up in your payment processor, or use payment plan software (also called installment management software). Stripe, for example, can collect installments through subscription schedules and invoices. Payment plan software such as Paythen adds the plan builder, checkout, reminders, failed-payment follow-ups and customer self-serve page on top of your own Stripe account, so you don’t build or run these yourself.

6. Put the option where customers decide

Add the plan to your checkout or product page (WooCommerce, Shopify, your booking or enrolment form), or send a payment link by email, text or social. Mention it on the product page, not only at the final step.

Running payment plans yourself vs using a BNPL provider

	Your own payment plans (with Paythen)	BNPL provider
Who sets the terms	You: deposit, dates, length	The provider
When you’re paid	As the customer pays	Upfront
Customer approval	None; any card	Credit check or approval
Order limits	None	Often capped
Branding and customer relationship	Yours	Theirs
Cost	2% per payment, plus Stripe fees, which you can pass on to the customer	Usually 6% to 12% per order, which they force you to absorb

You can pass the cost on. With Paythen you can add a small admin fee to the payment plan option to cover the 2% and Stripe’s fees, and most customers are happy to pay it for the convenience of spreading the cost. BNPL providers forbid this: their merchant terms don’t let you charge customers extra for using them, so you bear the whole fee yourself.

BNPL makes sense when you must be paid in full upfront and your margins can carry the fee. Some businesses use both for different products.

Offering payment plans with Paythen

Paythen is payment plan software that works through your own Stripe account. You can offer:

Payment plans with weekly, monthly or custom intervals.
Date-based plans, where everyone pays on the same dates (events, travel, training and certification courses, cohorts).
Wait for it plans, where the customer pays before you deliver.
Pay your way and Flexipay, where customers choose to pay in full or over time, within your limits.

Every plan gets a payment link that works anywhere, plus integrations for WooCommerce, Shopify and 7,000+ apps through Zapier. Customers get reminders and a self-serve page; failed payments are followed up automatically. Always free while you test. Just 2% per live payment, plus Stripe fees, with no monthly fee. You can try every plan type in test mode without a card.

Questions about countries, currencies or your platform? See Is Paythen available in my country?, WooCommerce and Shopify.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a lender to offer payment plans?
No. You can offer your own payment plans and collect each payment from the customer’s card. A lender or BNPL provider is only needed if you want to be paid in full upfront.

Can I charge more for a payment plan?
Usually yes, if you show the total clearly. Many businesses add a small fee to the payment plan option or a discount for paying in full. Check the rules that apply in your country and industry.

What happens if a customer stops paying?
Software like Paythen retries the payment, emails the customer to update their card and tells you. A deposit and clear terms reduce the risk further. You decide what happens next, for example pausing access until the plan is up to date.

Can I offer payment plans with Stripe?
Yes. Stripe can collect installments, and Paythen works on top of your Stripe account to add payment plan checkout, reminders and customer self-serve pages without code. See how to create a payment plan in Stripe using Paythen.

Summary

To offer payment plans to customers: set the deposit and schedule, price the plan, write clear terms, plan for missed payments, and use a tool that automates collection. Running your own plans keeps your margin, your brand and your customers. Try Paythen in test mode to build a plan and go through checkout yourself.

Increase sales by offering easy payment plans in one minute.

Free forever while you test. Then just 2% per payment.

Your account starts in test mode. When you’re ready to accept live payments, create or connect a Stripe account.

Easy payment plans

Offer your customers a flexible payment plan set by you, to increase conversions and sales.

Easy payment links

An easy to share payment link that works on any website and any device - matching your brand.

Flexible plan types

Offer payment plans, pay your way plans where customers can choose, subscriptions or one-off payments.

Automated reminders & emails

We automatically send handy reminders before payments & follow-ups if a payment fails.

Change payment info easily

Your customers can change their card info anytime they want, with zero time spent by your team.

Integrate with other apps

Send Paythen data to over 7,000+ other apps with our Zapier integration.

Discover more features, check out these examples or see our FAQs

Woocommerce

Make your payment plan option more granular and tailored. Till now you could show the payment plan option based on specific products being in the cart, now you can specify variants or quantities of that product too. Want to show the payment plan option only when someone is buying 5 or more of something? You can now do that. Or show it only for a specific variant of a product? Because that is much more expensive than other variants? Yes you can!

You can now choose exactly which product variants offer a payment plan in your WooCommerce store, and only offer it once a customer is buying a certain quantity or more. Eg: offer a payment plan on your 1:1 coaching package but not your self-paced course, on larger sizes only, or on team bookings of 4 or more tickets.

This is available in our WooCommerce plugin v0.9.8.2 and higher (download the latest version here) and works with both standard and blocks-based checkouts.

If you have Enable Paythen for specific products only switched on in your Paythen plugin settings, each product’s edit page in WordPress has a Paythen payment plan box. Tick Show payment plan option when this product is in the cart as before, and you’ll now see two more options:

Only show for selected variants – for products with variants, tick the ones that should offer a payment plan. Variants you don’t tick, including any you add later, won’t offer one.
Show when a specific quantity or higher is selected – set a minimum quantity, and the payment plan is only offered once a customer has at least that many in their cart.

Use either option, or both together. Leave them off and the product works just as it does today.

If you show the “Easy payment plan available” text on product pages, it follows the same rules. It appears as soon as a customer picks a variant or quantity that qualifies, and hides again if they switch to one that doesn’t.

At checkout, the payment plan option shows when any product in the cart qualifies, the same way the specific products setting already works.

As always, we’d love to hear what you think. If you have questions or feedback, reach out via the chat icon 💬

👉 Download the latest WooCommerce plugin
👉 WooCommerce Paythen integration setup guide

Payment Pages

Date-based templates: bill on the same day each month

Date-based plan templates now have a second way to set payment dates. Instead of picking fixed and pre-set calendar dates, you can choose a day of the month – say the 15th – and a total number of payments. Each customer is then charged on the 15th of every month, starting from when they sign up, plus an optional sign up fee.

Because each customer’s dates are calculated automatically when they check out, plans created this way always have payment dates in the future. With fixed pre-set dates, customers signing up after any date had passed had to pay a larger lump-sum on sign up to catch up. If what you’re selling doesn’t have a hard cut off date, this new approach can work well. For plans where everyone must complete payments by a specific date, the existing date-based or Flexipay setup continues to work well.

When you create or edit a date-based template, choose Same day each month under “How should payment dates be set?”, then set:

Which day of the month — any day from the 1st to the 31st. If you pick the 29th, 30th or 31st, shorter months use their last day, and the following month goes back to your chosen day.
Number of monthly payments — the total is split evenly between them, to the cent, so the payments always add up to the exact total.
When the first payment is — for customers who sign up before your chosen day, start their payments in the same month or wait until the following month. Eg: with the 15th, a customer signing up on 9 October first pays on 15 October with “Start in the same month”, or on 15 November with “Start from the following month”. Anyone signing up on or after the 15th starts the following month either way.

You can still add a one-time upfront fee, like a deposit or setup fee, which is charged at sign up – either on top of the total or deducted from it. As you fill in the details, an example schedule shows exactly what a customer signing up today would pay and when.

paythen-same-day-each-month-preview

Fixed dates are still the best fit when everyone is working towards the same date – a trip, a retreat or a course start – and you want every customer paid up by a specific date in the future.

Same day each month suits ongoing sales where customers sign up at any time, but you want payments being charged on a predictable day every month regardless of when someone signs up.

This is only available for date-based plans created via templates at the moment. This will roll out to date-based plans created directly via the dashboard in the future too. As always, we’d love to hear what you think. If you have questions or feedback, reach out via the chat icon 💬

👉 Create a date-based template in your dashboard
👉 Date-based payment plans guide

Admin

Paythen now has a one-click test mode toggle – you can switch to this anytime to try out new plan types, understand how a new discount would work, test new templates and understand customer progression first-hand. You get real emails in test mode from simulated events – just like your customers would. Use test mode to fast-forward payment plans, get customer-facing emails, simulate what happens when a payment fails, and test new things without any live payments.

To try test mode, just flip the switch next to the Paythen logo. A yellow “You’re in test mode” label stays on while you’re in it so there’s never any doubt about which data you’re looking at. Flip it back and you’re in live mode exactly where you left off. The first time you or someone on your team toggles on test mode, we’ll add some sample test mode data you can check out. Create more by signing up to a test plan yourself. Wipe it with one-click whenever you want.

Build and refine new plans — payment plans, Pay your way, date-based, Wait for it, Flexipay, subscriptions and one-off payments, plus templates and discount codes.

See exactly what customers see — open any test plan link and go through the full checkout with simulated card fields. No real card is saved or charged. Use a real working email to ensure you get the same emails customers would. You can toggle your admin email settings for test mode separate to your live mode settings too.

Simulate what happens next — test plans don’t advance on their own, so each test customer’s page has controls to simulate the next payment, a failed payment, or send the upcoming payment reminder.

Get the real emails — sign up with a working email and the customer and admin emails land in your inbox, clearly marked as test-mode emails. Email settings in test mode are separate, so you can switch them on or off without affecting live.

Copy between modes — move plans, templates and discounts from test to live once you’re happy, or bring a live plan into test to try a change. Each copy is a new, isolated object and not synced between modes in real time to avoid accidental changes. Copy back and forth as often as needed.

Start fresh any time — add a set of sample customers, plans, templates and discounts in various statuses, or wipe all test data with one click via Settings › Account info. Live data is never touched when you do this.

Test test mode templates with WooCommerce — If you’re using our WooCommerce plugin, you can use a test-mode template link to check the full store-to-payment-plan flow before going live – this gives you a full picture of what your customers will see using your exact plan setup and configuration. Don’t forget to change this to a live template link once you’re done testing!

A few things to know

Test mode doesn’t currently work with Zapier and creates no data in your Stripe account. Early access features like Offers and our Rewardful integration aren’t available in test mode yet. If you need to test a full workflow involving Zapier or Stripe data, use a separate Paythen demo account connected to a Stripe sandbox.

As always, we’d love to hear what you think. If you have questions or feedback, reach out via the chat icon 💬

👉 Try test mode in your dashboard now
👉 Testing in Paythen guide
👉 Understand demo accounts (vs. test mode)

Payment Pages

If you’ve ever wanted to give your customers more say in how they pay — without losing control over key aspects, Flexipay offers exactly that. It’s our most flexible plan type, and it puts the power of choice in your customers’ hands, within the rules you set. This helps you attract and sell to more customers.

Flexipay plans let each of your customers design their own payment schedule when they check out. You define the rules — the minimum deposit, the completion timeframe or date, and whether to allow customers to pay in full — and each customer picks what suits them. No two customers need to be on the same schedule. One might pay weekly over 3 months, another monthly over 6 — all from the single plan link you create. 🙌

Try a live Flexipay demo here to see exactly what your customers experience.

Flexibility for your customers doesn’t mean ambiguity for you. As the business owner, you set the key parameters like:

Minimum payment — what customers need to pay upfront – $100, 10%, etc.
Completion timeframe or date — all payments must be completed within a specific timeframe from sign up (eg: 12 months) or a specified date (eg: 28 January 2027)
Allow pay-in-full — decide whether you want to offer the option to pay in full
Pay-in-full discount — optionally reward customers who pay the full amount upfront

Flexipay also supports ecommerce and other scenarios where each customer has a varying total via templates. This lets you bring the power of Flexipay plans to any workflow you have including WooCommerce, Shopify and almost anything else via Zapier.

Flexipay is a great fit for businesses where customers have varying budgets or cash flow preferences — and where a one-size-fits-all plan isn’t ideal. Some examples include:

🎓 Coaches & course creators — let students choose a deposit and pace that suits their cashflow

📸 Photographers & creatives — offer payment flexibility without lengthy back-and-forth on custom plans

🏋️ Fitness & wellness — training packages and retreats where clients have different financial rhythms

🎪 Events & experiences — sell tickets or packages months in advance and let customers spread the cost their way, while having a hard completion date for everyone x days before the event

🛠️ Service businesses — take on clients who need flexibility without abandoning your payment terms

If you currently use our Pay Your Way plans for flexibility, Flexipay takes that further — giving customers true control over their own schedule, not just a choice between two fixed options. Talk to us about migrating your existing Pay your way plans to Flexipay if this suits your needs better.

As always, we’d love to hear what you think. If you have questions or feedback, reach out via the chat icon 💬

👉 Try the Flexipay demo
👉 Flexipay setup instructions

Zapier

If you use Paythen with your ecommerce store either via the email based flow (eg: for Shopify) or our plugin (like WooCommerce), the flow typically involves customers completing the checkout with the payment plan option chosen, and then either being shown or emailed their payment plan link.

For WooCommerce, the order status automatically changes if they complete their payment plan payment, but for email based workflows like Shopify, Webflow, Eventbrite and any others, once a customer is emailed their payment plan link, you had to manually check if they had paid by logging into the Paythen dashboard, and then manually following up.

You can now fully automate this process with our new Find Customer action available in Zapier. In your zap where you send customers the Paythen payment plan link, just add a short delay after the current flow (eg: wait for 10 minutes) and then use the Find Customer action to check if the customer exists in Paythen. If they do, you can update your eCommerce store order – eg: adding a note and/or tag in Shopify and passing the customer’s Paythen link for reference or in other platforms, you can update the status of the order directly too.

If the customer doesn’t exist, this means they haven’t signed up to their payment plan yet – you can set it up in Zapier to send them a reminder with custom text in it and include the payment plan link again. You can then continue to do this multiple times for a few hours or even a few days after the order was placed, and cancel the order and more as needed if the customer doesn’t pay eventually.

The same setup works when you’re using Paythen with any third party form tool, or any other custom workflows where you show / email them the payment plan link. You can now just add a short delay, then check if they have paid and exist as a customer in Paythen, and if not, trigger one or more reminders and take further steps as needed.

This process required manual admin till now – but can now be fully automated, saving you time. To get started, open your Zapier account and in the action step, choose “Find Customer”. You can modify your existing zap by adding a delay after you send the payment plan link, then checking if the customer exists in Paythen, and then either updating the order in your eCommerce platform or other system (find order and add a note in Shopify for example), or if not found, you can then trigger another reminder email with custom text. You can then set up further steps to check again, say in 1 hour, 4 hours, 2 days, etc to continue automated follow-ups as needed.

If you’re not sure how to do this with your workflow, just reach out to us via the chat icon and we’ll help you get set up.