Subscription commerce is the part of an online store that sells the same product to a customer again and again, on a schedule, without the customer ordering each time. A monthly pack of coffee, a bag of pet food every 30 days and a box of protein bars every two weeks are all sold this way. The software is usually an app that a brand adds to its e-commerce platform.
The software does three jobs. First, it creates the repeat order on the right day, with the right product and price. Second, it gives each customer a page of their own, called the customer portal. There, the customer can skip one delivery, change the flavour, move the date or cancel. Third, it collects the payment for each order, and tries again when a payment fails.
Say a pet-food brand in Pune sells a 4-kilogram bag of dog food for ₹2,400. A dog owner chooses "deliver every 30 days" and gets 10% off, so she pays ₹2,160 a bag. At the first checkout, she sets up a UPI AutoPay mandate. A mandate is a standing permission, given once with her UPI PIN, that lets the brand debit the same amount from her bank account on a schedule. Every 30 days, the subscription app creates a new order and asks the payment gateway to collect ₹2,160 under the mandate. Under RBI rules, she receives a notice before each debit. In the third month, her dog is unwell and eats less. So she opens the customer portal and skips one delivery.
Payments fail more often than shoppers expect. The bank account may be short of money that day, or a card may have expired. Then the app tries the payment again a day or two later, and sends the customer a WhatsApp message with a link to pay. This chasing of a failed payment is called dunning. Without it, a customer who still wants the product would lose the subscription by mistake.
Why do brands want subscriptions? A customer who signs up once orders many times, and the brand can plan its stock months ahead. The skip button matters too. A customer who can skip a month easily is less likely to cancel altogether.
Subscription commerce is different from subscription billing. Subscription billing charges for a service, such as a software plan, and nothing is shipped. In subscription commerce, every charge creates a physical order that must be packed and delivered. Milk and bread delivered before dawn every day is a related case, with its own software for stock, routes and cold storage: see milk and grocery subscription.