A Shopify store, a Ukrainian sole proprietor, LiqPay or Plata by Mono acquiring. You install Recharge or Appstle, a “Subscribe” toggle appears on the product page, the first order goes through — and a month later nothing is charged. The app shows the subscription as active, the payment did not happen, there is no error.
This is not a bug in the app. It is Shopify’s architecture.
Why
Shopify subscription apps do not charge money themselves. They create a “subscription contract” through the Subscriptions API, and the charge is made by Shopify — through Shopify Payments or through gateways that support so-called vaulted payments, storing the card on Shopify’s side.
Shopify Payments is unavailable in Ukraine. LiqPay, Plata by Mono and WayForPay connect as third-party providers, and none of them implements card vaulting for the Subscriptions API. So the contract is created, and there is nothing to charge it with. Recharge, Bold, Appstle, Seal, Loop — all are in the same position, because all depend on the same mechanism.
More on what Shopify can and cannot do in Ukraine is on the Shopify integration page.
Three options that actually work
A custom integration with tokenisation
A developer builds a solution of your own: the first payment through mono or LiqPay with a saved token, a scheduler that creates an invoice against the token on the right day, and logic that creates an order in Shopify through the Admin API after a successful charge. The customer dashboard is a separate page in the theme.
Ukrainian agencies sell this as a packaged product for mono. Pros: full control, everything inside your store. Cons: a one-off development cost, maintenance on you, every change in the monobank or Shopify API is your problem. Retries, notifications, pause and frequency changes have to be built too.
A subscription service on top of your acquiring
A widget on the product page that runs the subscription flow separately from Shopify Checkout: the customer picks a frequency, pays through your LiqPay or mono, the token stays with the payment provider, the service holds the schedule and charges. After every charge an order is created in your Shopify admin through the Admin API, the Nova Poshta shipment is created automatically, the customer gets a dashboard.
That is how Neocarts works. Pros: no billing development, the dashboard and retries already exist, pricing is 5% of successful charges with no monthly fee. Cons: the subscription checkout is not the native Shopify checkout, and you have to accept two order streams living side by side.
Take subscriptions out of the store
For a brand where subscriptions are a secondary channel, it is sometimes simpler not to touch Shopify at all: a Neocarts subscription checkout page linked from a button on the product page, no widget in the theme. The same mechanism as for Horoshop and Tilda. Orders are not mirrored into Shopify unless you ask for that through the API.
Comparison
| Recharge / Bold / Appstle | Custom build on mono | Neocarts | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Charges through LiqPay / mono | No | Yes | Yes |
| Cost | $0–99+/month + % | One-off development, from several thousand dollars | 5% of successful charges |
| Monthly fee | Yes | No | No |
| Customer dashboard | Yes, but without charges | Has to be built | Included |
| Retries after a failed charge | — | Has to be built | Included |
| Orders in the Shopify admin | Yes | Through the Admin API | Through the Admin API |
| Nova Poshta | No | Has to be integrated | Included |
| Keeping up with API changes | On the vendor | On you | On us |
A custom build makes sense when subscriptions are the core of a business with seven-figure turnover and specific checkout requirements. In every other case the cost difference over a year is several times — not in favour of the custom build. The article on subscription unit economics helps run this on your own numbers.
What to do if the app is already installed
Switch off the subscription toggle on the product page so no contracts are created that will never be charged. Move existing subscribers, if there are any, by hand: an email with a link to the new subscription, a first payment — and automatic from there. The app can be removed as soon as the last contract is closed.
The recurring mechanism itself and the pricing are described separately. If your theme is unusual, send a request — we will look at where to place the widget with the fewest changes.