Hi — I’m hitting a wall verifying Subscriptions before going to production, and I’d
like to know whether what I’m seeing is an expected Sandbox limitation.
## Setup
Sandbox, Japan seller account, JP / JPY location, Square-Version 2026-08-19.
A SUBSCRIPTION_PLAN with one SUBSCRIPTION_PLAN_VARIATION, MONTHLY cadence,
STATIC pricing of 3000 JPY.
## What happens
Every subscription I create becomes DEACTIVATED on (or within seconds of) its
billing start date. Nothing is billed and nothing is produced:
-
invoice_ids stays empty
-
charged_through_date is never set
-
no Order is created
-
ListSubscriptionEvents returns only START_SUBSCRIPTION followed by
DEACTIVATE_SUBSCRIPTION, and the `info` field is null, so there is no
reason given
## What I have already ruled out
-
Card on file, and no card at all — same result either way.
-
STATIC pricing, and RELATIVE pricing with an order_template_id passed in
the CreateSubscription `phases` array — same result.
-
A brand new plan, customer and card — same result.
-
Three independent Japan Sandbox test accounts, different merchants —
same result in all three.
-
The location is ACTIVE with CREDIT_CARD_PROCESSING and AUTOMATIC_TRANSFERS.
-
The Invoices API itself works fine in the same Sandbox: I built an Order
manually, created an Invoice from it and published it successfully
(status UNPAID, invoice number issued, public URL returned).
-
One-off CreatePayment in the same Sandbox returns COMPLETED with a
receipt_url, so the card and the location are usable.
-
automatic_payment_source is rejected on CreateSubscription at this API
version (“The field named ‘automatic_payment_source’ is unrecognized”),
so I cannot explicitly request invoice-based billing instead of card.
## Questions
1. Is subscription recurring billing simply not exercised in Sandbox? If so,
is that documented somewhere I can point my client to?
2. If it is supposed to run, what am I missing that causes the immediate
DEACTIVATE_SUBSCRIPTION with no reason?
3. Is there any supported way to inspect what a subscription invoice will
contain — line items, applied tax rate, tax amount per rate — before
going to production? This is for Japanese qualified-invoice (適格請求書)
compliance, so I need to confirm the tax breakdown appears on the invoice
before we bill real customers.
Subscription IDs, all Sandbox:
d4baaaa1-f61e-47b9-a2b4-673603559ca3 (third account, card on file)
b716493c-b3cc-4f51-be09-63b30c116b89 (no card)
ef0a134f-574d-444e-b5c0-39d397c0b168 (card on file)
Happy to share full request/response bodies if that helps. Thanks.