What's New in Subscriptions
Discover the latest updates to Arc XP's Subscriptions application.
Release dates
Sandbox - Tuesday, April 29, 2025
Production - Tuesday, May 6, 2025
Release summary
EU clients now can easily add PayPal as an option to their checkout workflow with our new PayPal with Stripe integration. This offers you a broader range of payment options for your users and prospective subscribers.
Due to restrictions imposed by PayPal, PayPal with Stripe is available only in the EU.
To implement this feature, see How to add PayPal (Stripe) as a payment provider.
Users affected
Subscriptions marketers and developers
Action required
Work with Stripe to add PayPal as a payment option. Then implement this into your checkout workflow.
Release dates
Sandbox - Tuesday, April 8, 2025
Production - Tuesday, April 15, 2025
Release summary
We’ve updated the error message that appears when a login session extension fails due to the number of devices already signed in to an account. This can occur when a user is logged in on multiple devices or is sharing their account with others. You can use this message to guide users toward upgrading to Friends and Family packages.
Now, when a request to POST /identity/public/v1/auth/login or /identity/public/v1/auth/token fails because the account has reached its maximum number of devices, error code 100013 is returned.
If the user then successfully authenticates on the device that triggered the error message, the oldest active session will fail to refresh.
Users affected
Identity developers
Action required
To configure the active session limit and this error message, see Active Sessions.
Release dates
Sandbox - Wednesday, April 2, 2025
Production - Thursday, April 3, 2025
Release summary
You can now build a one-time access link workflow using the Identity SDK without need a token when CAPTCHA is disabled.
Users affected
Identity Developers
Action required
Upgrade @arc-publishing/sdk-identity to version 1.93.0 to make use of this fix.
Release dates
Sandbox - Wednesday, March 12, 2025
Production - Wednesday, March 26, 2025
Release summary
A new set of public, end-user-facing APIs gives you more flexibility when managing subscriptions changes. These new options allow you to:
Adjust a user's entitlement product when upgrading or downgrading.
Modify renewal timing, including shifting from monthly to yearly billing.
Apply prorated charges and refunds for seamless transitions.
For more information, see User-facing APIs for subscription upgrades, downgrades, and renewal adjustments.
How this benefits your business
These updates make it easier to build, upgrade, and downgrade workflows that support your key business strategies, including:
Retaining customers by offering lower-priced subscriptions before cancellation.
Encouraging longer commitments by transitioning users to longer renewal periods.
Driving higher-value conversions by promoting feature-rich subscriptions tiers.
For more information, see Change price for subscription.
Users affected
Marketers and Developers
Action required
Use the APIs to build, upgrade, and save workflows on your site.
Release dates
Sandbox and Production - Monday, January 27, 2025
Release summary
This release fixes an issue that caused the Product screen in the Retail admin to load slowly and, at times, error.
Users affected
Subscriptions users
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Wednesday, January 29, 2025
Production - Tuesday, February 5, 2025
Release summary
Arc XP Subscriptions is now integrated with Stripe Tax. This allows you to use a single integration and provider for your payments and tax calculations.
To use Stripe Tax for your tax calculations, you must establish a relationship with Stripe. You receive unique identification information that the system uses when contacting Stripe for your tax calculations. When you have your Stripe Tax information, contact Arc XP Customer Support to have this option enabled in the settings Admin. After you add Stripe to your account, we automatically include the tax calculations and amount during checkout. For more details on configuring Stripe, see Set up taxes: custom taxes and external integrations.
Users affected
Subscription developers
Action required
To use Stripe Tax, you must create an account with Stripe Tax, and then contact Arc XP Customer Support to enable Stripe Tax in your Arc XP account.
Release dates
Sandbox - Tuesday, December 3, 2024
Production - Monday, December 9, 2024
Release summary
Data Extraction Framework: We updated the user extract to include birthday. The following fields have been added: "birthYear", "birthMonth", "birthDay" .
Identity
The One Time Access link authentication has been updated to allow profile updates that are consistent with the other login methods. For more information, see Implementing Arc XP Identity Flows for Registration and Access.
You can now protect the reset password request flow with reCAPTCHA. If you already have reCAPTCHA set up in the Subscriptions Settings admin, then you only need to enable the toggle for that setting and add the iFrame to that page on your site. For more information, see reCAPTCHA.
Subscriptions
We have corrected an issue where archived prices were allowed to be used during an active subscription change using the developer APIs. You now receive an error message when attempting to change to an archived price rate. This validation works only when the price has been archived prior to the price change request.
Note
To prevent payment failures and payment gateway connection issues, the renewal engine will be turned off for up to 30 minutes during standard releases and maintenance deployments. Any renewals during this period will be queued and processed automatically when the engine is back online. No data will be lost, and there is no impact to checkout functionality. Subscription entitlement will continue to work as normal.
Users affected
Developers
Action required
Identity: No immediate action required if you are not using the updated functionality
Subscriptions: Update your active change workflows to handle the error code for archived prices
Release dates
Sandbox - Monday, October 21, 2024
Production - Tuesday, November 19, 2024 (was previously Thursday, October 24, 2024)
Release summary
This release includes the following updates:
Corrected payment due information so it does not show for a shared subscription
Extract birthdate, during the initial login, from the OIDC token when available.
Updated to API and SDK documentation:
Fixed an issue where APIs where incorrectly showing as deprecated.
Removed the reCAPTCHA required indicator for social sign-in
Users affected
Developers and Customer service representatives
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Tuesday, September 3, 2024
Production - Thursday, September 5, 2024
Release summary
Taxamo Events
If you use Taxamo for calculating taxes, you can now use a new websocket event type to alert you to renewal failures caused by Taxamo not being able to calculate taxes where it has been able to in the past. The event type is TAXAMO_ISSUE and it contains the following members:
clientId- the ID of the affected customermessage- a string that explains what went wrong. The message could be one of:Taxamo did not return 200 when called by Arc XP
Taxamo returned 200 but Arc XP was not able to parse the response
Connection timed out when Arc XP called Taxamo
Taxamo is unable to calculate taxes for this transaction
A message from Taxamo
Enterprise Group Subscriptions
The subscription extract now includes more details about both Email- and Enterprise-Group subscriptions. If a subscription is one of the types of group subscription, then its JSON document in the extract now contains the following new fields:
group.accessCodegroup.listNamegroup.packageIdgroup.groupPackageID
Users affected
Developers
Action required
Taxamo: Use new messages to communicate with users whose payment method addresses need to be updated.
Enterprise Groups Subscriptions: No action required.
Release dates
Sandbox - Monday, July 22, 2024
Production - Tuesday, July 23, 2024
Release summary
The Identity migration scripts have been updated to correct an issue with the password migration. Now, when the password migration type is set to Copy, the user is correctly created without a password, and any password will be accepted the first time they log in.
Users affected
Developers, end users
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Tuesday, June 25, 2024
Production
ap-northeast-1 and ap-southeast-2 - Thursday, June 27, 2024
eu-central-1 - Monday, July 1, 2024
us-east-1 - Tuesday, July 2, 2024
Release summary
Enterprise Group Subscriptions
You now have a new way to manage your large group subscription packages. Using Enterprise Group Subscriptions, you can build workflows for your largest customers. Our APIs let you build the flows to support your business and connect with your management tools. You can create and manage groups, and those groups can then access codes sent to users, all with APIs. For more details on these APIs and the workflows, see Enterprise Groups.
CDP Connector
Understanding users' behaviors and their actions is key for you to increase monetization. You have many channels where users interact with your marketing and brand that provide valuable first-party data. The best way to gather and utilize this first-party data is with a CDP.
We are making it easy for you to connect your CDP to create dynamic, targeted flows with Arc XP. Using our CDP Connector, you can benefit from data collected across your brand, and use groups created from analyzing it, with the targeting capabilities of the Arc XP Paywall. You can now recognize engaged users using audience segments and get them through the registration process. Then you can continue to track and segment those users to understand when a targeted subscription wall would be most effective. This is quick and easy to do with our extendable Connector for BlueConic. You can use this with minor updates for those CDPs or extend the Connector for your preferred CDP.
Dynamic registration flows that target anonymous users based on the CDP segment
Personalized paywalls that target users who are most likely to subscribe with a compelling offer
Using the CDP Connector enables you to grow your user base, better understand users, and convert them to subscribers.
Bug fixes
Corrected a format issue where more than two digits would be returned for a prorated refund causing processing errors.
Updated the Change Active Subscription develop API so server to server interactions also correct the NumShare when a subscription product is changed.
Users affected
Developers
Action required
Plan your Enterprise Group client structure before building flows for connecting with your group subscription tools.
Connect your CDP with the Arc XP Paywall.
Release dates
Sandbox - Monday, June 3, 2024 (was previously Wednesday, May 29, 2024)
Production - the week of Monday, June 10, 2024 (was previously Wednesday, June 5, 2024)
Release summary
User names are now fully anonymized. This issue was resulting in the same user not being able to register again later on. This did not cause any user data to be retained after anonymization, just issues with subsequent registrations.
Users affected
Developers
Action required
To configure multiple Apple provider accounts use the APPLE value when setting up an OIDC provider. See How to use Arc XP identity as IDP (OIDC).
Release dates
Sandbox - Wednesday, May 8, 2024
Production - Tuesday, May 14, 2024
Release summary
Identity Bug Fixes
Updated the OIDC flows so a card appears in the Customer Service admin when an OIDC provider login is associated to the Arc XP Identity account.
Improved security for the password reset flow APIs so attackers are not able to see if accounts exist in the Arc XP system.
Fixed an issue with the password reset when a user’s email address was not the same as the username.
Sales Bug Fixes
Corrected cases where multiple subscription terminations could be recorded on one account and appear to have duplicate terminated subscriptions.
Users affected
Developers, Customer Service Representatives
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Tuesday, March 19, 2024 Wednesday, March 27, 2024
Production - Tuesday, March 26, 2024 Monday, April 8, 2024 to Thursday, April 11, 2024
Release summary
A new setting lets you configure whether a customer is allowed to add more than one item to their shopping cart during checkout. The default value for this setting is OFF, so the cart continues to function as it always has, but setting the switch to ON can help eliminate cases where customers accidentally purchase multiple subscriptions. If you want to enable this setting, contact ACS to submit a ticket for the Subscriptions team to turn the switch On.
A customer service representative now sees a better description from PayPal when a subscription renewal is declined. This applies only to publishers using the classic PayPal integration.
An issue with accounts migrated into Arc XP Identity with SHA-256 hashed passwords has been corrected.
Users affected
Developers, Customer Service Representatives
Action required
Contact Arc XP Customer Support if you want to use the setting to block multiple items during checkout.
Release dates
Sandbox - Tuesday, February 20, 2024
Production - Thursday, February 29, 2024
Release summary
Previously scheduled price changes in the change active subscription flows no longer override changes that you or a CSR make. If a price change is scheduled, and you or a CSR make a price change prior to the scheduled event, the system now cancels that event.
This release also includes internal monitoring and performance improvements.
Users affected
Developers, Customer Service Representatives
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Monday, February 5, 2024
Production - Wednesday, February 14, 2023
Release summary
It’s now easier for you to track and measure your paywall, offer, and checkout performance. The Metrics SDK now lets you pass data that is stored and available through extracts on paywall views, cart creations, checkout successes, and the article IDs leading to those actions.
To begin tracking this data, you must update your SDK version and use the Metrics SDK.
Users affected
Developers, Marketers
Action required
Update your SDK version and use the Metrics SDK.
Release dates
Sandbox - Monday, January 29, 2024
Production - Tuesday, January 30, 2024
Release summary
Social login unlinking now works as expected so no issues exist when disconnecting through the user profile.
Users affected
Developers, Marketers
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Wednesday, January 24, 2024
Production - Tuesday, January 30, 2024
Release summary
The one-time access link now includes the refresh token.
Subscription upgrades now correctly assess tax on the prorated amount instead of the full amount.
Users affected
Developers, Marketers
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Tuesday, January 23, 2024
Production - Thursday, January 25, 2024
Release summary
We are optimizing our paywall rules ordering functionality so it is easier to understand and less ambiguous. The ordering determines what rule is triggered if there are two that reach their read count. No changes are being made to the metering count, just the order of which rule triggers. This ensures that marketers can configure the rule they want to trigger within a ruleset.
Users affected
Developers, Marketers
Action required
No action required if paywall rules are configured to not risk overlapping meter counts.
When configuring paywall rules, the order of the rules in a ruleset determines which will trigger first if two or more reach their read count.