Not for live payments. Paythen processes every live payment through your own Stripe account, so the money goes straight to you.
You don’t need Stripe to get started, though. Your account starts in test mode, which is free forever, so you can build plans and try the checkout without Stripe. When you’re ready to accept live payments, create or connect a Stripe account.
No credit card needed. Connect or create a Stripe account when you’re ready for live payments.
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:
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
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:
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.
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
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)
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:
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 💬
Exporting customer data via your Paythen dashboard now includes more granular data regarding discount codes – the type of discount, frequency, the total discount amount and more. Head to the customers tab in your Paythen dashboard and click on the export data button to see the details.
We’ve also add a next payment amount field in addition to the existing next payment date field which gives you better visibility into any upcoming payment amounts when looking at the data in the export.
With our new “Customer Status Change” Zapier trigger, you can now set up precise workflows to suit your business process.
This trigger lets you send custom text messages, emails or update access in your other systems based on customer’s status change in Paythen. Eg: if you have a customer on a payment plan and if their status changes to Overdue – Retrying, you might want to trigger a custom text notification, or if a customer’s status changes to “Overdue – At risk” which means multiple retries have failed, you can remove their access to any systems. When a customer completes their payment plan, you can trigger an email asking for a review or feedback, and much more.
These are just some examples – this trigger works with any Paythen customer status, giving you a lot of potential workflows with sending data to other systems, sending customers additional emails and texts, or performing actions in your other systems.
Go to Zapier now to get started.
Add additional context about customers directly in Paythen to keep everyone on the same page or for your own reference with internal notes. Did a customer request a temporary pause? Some other special request? Cancelled and moved a customer to a new plan? Now you can add relevant information and context about any customer in Paythen with internal notes – just like a sticky note (but way more reliable).
Anyone on your Paythen team can see, add and edit internal notes but they are never visible to customers. You can add an internal note from the customers table, or via a customer’s detail page via the new notes icon. A handy indicator icon appears in the table view for customers that have one or more notes added to them to let you easily view and add more.
You can add multiple notes per customer and easily see which team member added or last edited a note. Notes can have formatting, links and of course, emoji 🎉 🤩 ⚡ 🙌
To add your first note, go to the customers page in your Paythen dashboard, click on the more menu next to any customer and choose the “Add an internal note”option.
Once you’ve added a note, it will be accessible via the customers table via the new notes icon that shows only for customers that have a note. Notes will also be visible when you view the customer’s detail page (only to you and your team). It’ll work the same way for everyone on your Paythen team.
Customers never see internal notes. They are useful for context about specific customers, their plans and even to add links to other systems for reference.
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.
If you use direct plan links in Paythen, our new “Find Plan” action gives you a way to automatically send your customers a link to an existing plan in your account based on changes and fields in your other systems. Eg: If a customer’s status in your CRM changes, or if they fill out a form on your website, you can find and send them the relevant plan link automatically.
Eg: You’re on the phone with a potential customer who says they want to move ahead with your Product Management Advanced Course. In your CRM or support system, you just add a tag or update a field and a zap you have set up will find the relevant plan in your Paythen account and send the customer an email, with no manual email composing, formatting, copying and pasting the link, etc. Or you just want a fast workflow to send customers different plan links, you can connect Slack or Teams to the Find plan action to send customers the relevant plan link based on a message in Slack – eg: When I post a message which contains the keyword “Plan ABC” and a customer’s email, then find the relevant plan and send an email to the customer via that email, and add a note in my CRM “Plan link sent on xx date” etc.
These are just a few examples but there are many advanced workflows you can now set up based on this Find Plan action and even more when combined with the Find Customer action – like you could send customers a plan link, then wait 1 hour, check if the customer exists in Paythen, and if not, trigger an automated follow up, and repeat this process for a few days or weeks as relevant.
To get started, log into your Zapier account and in your zap’s action step, choose the “Find customer” action.
When a customer signs up to any plan, we now automatically and invisibly check their entered email address for typos, delivery issues and a range of other checks. For customers where the email is flagged as potentially incorrect or invalid, we ask customers to re-check it and if needed, fix it. This is what a customer with an incorrect or invalid email will see after they submit their details on the payment page. If they indicate “Yes, I need to fix this” they will be shown a second screen to enter their updated email:
Because these are automated checks, they can very occasionally result in valid emails sometimes being flagged incorrectly so customers are given the option to say “This is correct” which overrides the automated check and marks the email as valid.
This flow doesn’t affect payment collection, nor does it prevent customers from signing up to a plan. There is no change or impact to the payment or sign up flow. For all customers, once they submit their payment information, the payment is immediately processed with no delays, even if the email is invalid. This validation flow triggers after they have paid and signed up.
In instances where a customer’s email is flagged as invalid but they abandon this flow without updating their email, the plan will continue without issues but the “invalid email” status will be clearly indicated in your admin dashboard and on the customer page. From there, either the customer or you as an admin can click on the “Fix it” link and trigger this flow any time to enter the correct email.
This helps prevent invalid or incorrectly typed emails from ending up in your Paythen account which not only reduces failed payments because customers receive upcoming payment reminders but also cuts down on manual admin for you and your team.
