Using 3D Secure payments with Stripe subscriptions

3D secure is fantastic technology that protects buyers and sellers and shifts the liability on payment disputes (a great thing, if you've ever been a victim of credit card fraud). However, one of the side-effects of requiring 3D secure is the impact on subscriptions.

As 3D Secure requires a step from the owner to authenticate a charge on the 3D Secure card, this means that subscriptions on cards with required 3D Secure validation will automatically fail. By default, this prevents new subscriptions from being created on cards that require 3D Secure validation. However, this default behavior can be changed by toggling on the option "Allow Incomplete Payments on Subscriptions" under Configure → Payments in the form editor.

This setting removes the requirement for the first charge to immediately succeed, which allows 3D secure payments to work for subscriptions.

For subscriptions created with cards that may require 3D Secure validation it is recommended to configure your Stripe billing settings to handle the 3DS flow for recurring payments. In particular enabling sending an email with a hosted link from Stripe to complete the authorization step. Refer to the Stripe documentation for more information on handling recurring charges.