Stripe Subscription active even with pending/failed card authentication

Question

I am working on a Metered Billing Subscription with Stripe, I am doing the integration with Elements.

My task here is to handle the scenarios where cards needs a 3D Secure verification.

As said on the doc ( https://stripe.com/docs/billing/subscriptions/metered#manage-payment-authentication ) on the step "9 Manage payment authentication", after creating the subscription with a card requiring a 3D Secure verification the subscription object should looks like this:

{
  "id": "sub_1ELI8bClCIKljWvsvK36TXlC",
  "object": "subscription",
  "status": "incomplete",
  ...
  "pending_setup_intent": {
    "status": "requires_action",
    "client_secret": "pi_91_secret_W9",
    "next_action": {
      "type": "use_stripe_sdk",
      ...
    },
    ...
  }
}

But in my case the subscription looks like this:

{
  "id": "sub_1ELI8bClCIKljWvsvK36TXlC",
  "object": "subscription",
  "status": "active",
  ...
  "pending_setup_intent": {
    "status": "requires_action",
    "client_secret": "pi_91_secret_W9",
    "next_action": {
      "type": "use_stripe_sdk",
      ...
    },
    ...
  }
}

The only difference is that in my case the status of the subscription is already "active", even with cards waiting for 3D Secure confirmation. With a fresh new customers with no existing payment method attached.

Stripe even sends a invoice.paid webhooks without the 3D Secure confirmation done by the user. Much more stranger, if I fail the verification, the subscription remains "active" ...

I don't know how to deal with that. I was thinking of verifying something like sub.status === 'active' && sub.pending_setup_intent === null sort of thing, instead of simply verifying sub.status === 'active' ... but I am really confused as I don't get the expected behavior from the documentation ..

Thank you !

Answer 1

It's hard to say for sure given the information you provided, but I think this may be a result of using an old API version. In Stripe API version 2019-03-14 the default payment_behavior of Subscriptions changed, which might be causing what you're seeing. The documentation assumes you're using the current API version.

If you explicitly set payment_behavior to default_incomplete does that change what you're seeing?

Alternatively, this could be a result of your first Subscription Invoice not requiring any payment. Metered Subscriptions in Stripe are post-paid, meaning your customers pay for their metered usage at the end of a Subscription period, not at the beginning. Thus, if there's no payment due immediately, the Subscription will immediately be active and the first $0 will be automatically marked as paid.

In any case, you should be using the pending_setup_intent the Subscription creates for you to set up your Customer's Payment Method for future use to optimize future recurring payments.