Stripe API refund after subscription cancelled

Question

From the Stripe docs:

When you cancel the subscription, the customer\'s card will not be charged again, but no money will be refunded either. If you

Answer 1

Stripe will handle this now. It can immediately cancel the subscription and create an invoice refunding them the cost of the unused part of the month.

https://stripe.com/docs/api/subscriptions/cancel

Add the "prorate" tag to refund the remaining monthly cost.

In PHP:

$subscription = \Stripe\Subscription::retrieve(
  'SUBSCRIPTION_ID'
);

$subscription->delete([
    'prorate' => true
]);

EDIT:

@Dobes Vandermeer commented below and pointed out my mistake. The above method will not actually refund the customer the prorated amount but only create an account credit which will be applied to the next invoice.

The code below will actually refund the prorated amount to the card. It generates a sample prorated invoice for if the customer switched their subscription quantity to zero. It then refunds that prorated amount from the last invoice on their active subscription.

The "subscription_proration_date" tag is optional but useful for if you need to prorate the subscription from a certain point in time.

// get active subscription
$subscription = \Stripe\Subscription::retrieve(' SUBSCRIPTION_ID ');

// sample prorated invoice for a subscription with quantity of 0
$sample_subscription_item = array(
    "id"       => $subscription->items->data[0]->id,
    "plan"     => $subscription->items->data[0]->plan->id,
    "quantity" => 0,
);

$upcoming_prorated_invoice = \Stripe\Invoice::upcoming([
    "customer"                    => $subscription->customer,
    "subscription"                => $subscription->id,
    "subscription_items"          => array($sample_subscription_item),
    "subscription_proration_date" => ' PRORATED_DATE ', // optional
]);

// find prorated amount
$prorated_amount = 0;
foreach($upcoming_prorated_invoice->lines->data as $invoice) {
    if ($invoice->type == "invoiceitem") {

        $prorated_amount = ($invoice->amount < 0) ? abs($invoice->amount) : 0;

        break;

    }
}

// find charge id on the active subscription's last invoice
$latest_invoice = \Stripe\Invoice::retrieve($subscription->latest_invoice);
$latest_charge_id = $latest_invoice->charge;

// refund amount from last invoice charge
if ($prorated_amount > 0) {

    $refund = \Stripe\Refund::create([
        'charge' => $latest_charge_id,
        'amount' => $prorated_amount,
    ]);

}

// delete subscription
$subscription->delete();