How payments work

PayGlocal Recurring has two flows, and it helps to understand both. The first payment is where the customer takes an action and authorises a mandate. Every payment after that is automatic — the WHMCS daily cron does the work and the customer sees nothing. This page walks through each so you know what your customers experience and what happens behind the scenes.

The first payment

The first time a customer pays an invoice through this gateway, they set up the recurring authorisation at the same time.

1. The customer clicks Pay & Authorize Recurring

On the WHMCS invoice, PayGlocal Recurring shows a Pay & Authorize Recurring button instead of a plain pay button. The wording is deliberate: paying this invoice also authorises you to charge future ones.

Client Area → Invoices → (an unpaid invoice)

2. They pay on PayGlocal's hosted checkout

The customer is redirected to PayGlocal's hosted checkout. They enter their card details on PayGlocal's secure page, complete any 3-D Secure step, and confirm — which both settles this invoice and authorises the recurring mandate. Because the checkout is hosted by PayGlocal, card details are never entered on your site.

3. WHMCS verifies and stores the mandate

When the payment completes, PayGlocal sends a signed result back to WHMCS. The gateway verifies it, saves the customer's mandate, and marks the invoice Paid. From here on, that client has one active mandate ready for automatic charges.

Dual verification, behind the scenes

You don't have to do anything for this, but it's worth knowing: the gateway doesn't take the callback at face value. It checks the callback's signature and cross-checks the outcome against PayGlocal's status API before accepting the payment. See Security for why this matters.

The automatic charges

Once a mandate exists, you stop being involved — the WHMCS daily cron handles renewals.

1. The daily cron runs

Your WHMCS daily cron must be running for this to work; it's what drives every recurring charge.

2. It finds invoices in the window

The cron looks for unpaid invoices due within your Days Before Due Date to Charge window. At the default of 2 days, an invoice due March 20 becomes eligible on March 18.

3. It charges the active mandate

For each eligible invoice, the cron finds the client's active mandate and charges it automatically — no customer action, no re-entering card details. A charge that would exceed the mandate's maximum is skipped rather than forced through (the amount guard).

4. The invoice is marked Paid

On a successful charge, WHMCS marks the invoice Paid just as it would for a manual payment. Everything the cron does — successes, skips, and failures — is recorded in the Gateway Log (Utilities → Logs → Gateway Log), which is where you look if a renewal didn't go through.

Keep the cron healthy

The automatic flow is only as reliable as your daily cron. If renewals stop happening, confirm the WHMCS daily cron is running before anything else.

Related pages

• How recurring mandates work — the authorisation the cron charges
• Security — how each charge is verified
• Test in sandbox, then go live — try both flows safely first
• Error reference — what the Gateway Log statuses mean