The answer - recurring billing - is pretty taboo in the e-commerce industry. This is mainly due to the fact that large boys, that is, Mastercard and Visa, have very strict rules governing recurring payment transactions.
Duplicate billing means storing customer credit / debit card data, long number, expiration date and cvv2 for further processing. However, this opens up a huge can of worms in terms of security. This is why Visa / Mastercard imposes rules for merchants, becoming compatible with PCIDSS. In practice, this means that your server / website must be certified for security using the McAfee PCIDSS service, which basically scans your server / website remotely and tries to break it. It looks for open ports, a poorly configured firewall (or lack of it), flaws in xss scripts, mysql injection breaks, operating system security violations, and many others. One of the most important elements with PCIDSS is the encryption of all card data.
This is a time-consuming process, since after receiving the report you must also restore all the important problems noted and pass the test. There are other steps to complete, but I will not list them all here. See pci dss website for reference. You should also regularly renew certificates quarterly.
Basically, this means that Visa / Mastercard do not particularly like small merchants to have this feature, since they can be a big risk for customers. If their system is broken, hackers can use these cards for criminal enterprises.
This, in turn, means that major industry players prefer Visa / Mastercard to process recurring billing, such as PayPal, Worldpay, authorize.net, etc. One port of call, one object for a fine and loss recovery, if there is a problem.
And now we are back to Magento. Although itβs relatively easy to create a regular payment method in Magento, since most PSPs work the same way [basically], recurring billing is handled differently from provider to provider. In addition, some are more restrictive than others.
I cannot and will not recommend PayPal, since I had a very bad experience with them, I can definitely recommend the Worldpay + Futurepay + Invisible XML method. You will need to hire a Magento developer to write a custom module for you, but this is doable. I am currently writing a module for a client in Norway using the Norwegian payment method and repeated billing.
If you still need help, contact us, I can write a module for your store.
Hope this helps.
Cheers, Michael.