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Last updated: June 26, 2026
You can let your customers start their subscriptions on a future date. This is useful when customers want to start a new subscription after a current subscription ends, or when they wish to take advantage of a current promotion but activate their subscription on a later date.
If you start a subscription on a future date, any setup or one-time fee associated with the subscription is charged immediately upon sign-up, but regular payments towards the subscription will start on the selected date.
You can update the subscription's start date as long as it's in the future.
API endpoint used: Create subscription
curl -v -X POST https://api-m.sandbox.paypal.com/v1/billing/subscriptions
-H "PayPal-Auth-Assertion: AUTH-ASSERTION" /
-H "Content-Type: application/json"
-H "Authorization: Bearer ACCESS-TOKEN"
-d '{
"plan_id": "P-5ML4271244454362WXNWU5NQ",
"start_time": "2021-11-01T00:00:00Z"
}'ACCESS-TOKEN - Your access token.
plan_id - the ID of the plan associated with this subscription.
start_time - the desired subscription start time and date, in UTC format. This field can be updated as long as the new value is set in the future.