What happens to active subscription contracts' billing cycles and payment tokens when migrating subscribers between any platform and Shopify's subscription data model?

Where does an imported contract's next billing date come from?

An imported contract's next billing date comes from nextBillingDate, a required field your subscription app sets on each contract. Shopify's reference calls the field "independent of billing cycles" and says it "stores metadata set by the apps, and thus not managed by Shopify" (Shopify developer docs, October 2026). Shopify doesn't charge on that date by itself either: "You need to create billing attempts to trigger the billing schedule of a contract" (Shopify developer docs, October 2026). So a contract imported with the wrong date bills on the wrong date, confidently, with no cycle arithmetic in Shopify to catch it. The date is one detail in the full order for moving an active subscription program, where each contract is recreated after its customer and payment method.

What happens to the billing cycle count on an imported contract?

The billing cycle count starts again at 1 on an imported contract. Shopify says "Each billing cycle is indexed from when the first version of the contract is initialized", and an imported contract is a new one (Shopify developer docs, October 2026). The billing policy carries the rhythm: interval, intervalCount, optional minCycles and maxCycles, and anchor dates for the interval calculation (Shopify developer docs, October 2026). Import the billing policy and the nextBillingDate from two different exports and the subscriber is charged twice or not at all.

Anything counted in cycles restarts too, unless the import adjusts it. A three-cycle minimum on a subscriber who has already paid twice starts over, and a price step set to begin after cycle 2 applies again (Deploi reading of Shopify's cycle indexing). Shopify adds that a pricing policy "serves as a guide for apps" and that "the price of the line item does not update automatically" (Shopify developer docs). So grandfathered prices belong on each contract line.

Do payment tokens move to Shopify?

Payment tokens don't move to Shopify: they stay with the processor that issued them, and Shopify bills them through that processor. A secondary gateway, "also known as the legacy subscription payment gateway", bills existing contracts. Shopify adds: "Your customers' payment methods are held by that processor, outside of Shopify" (Shopify Help Center, October 2026). Shopify connects four processors this way: Stripe, Braintree, PayPal Express and Authorize.net. New contracts, and contracts updated after migration, charge the primary gateway instead.

A payment method moves to the primary gateway only when its owner updates their billing details, so Shopify says this slow drip "can take months or even years" (Shopify Help Center). The import is narrow too. Shopify takes only credit cards from Stripe, and only credit cards and Apple Pay through Braintree's import. PayPal methods held in Braintree move only when extracted and recreated as PayPal Express billing agreements, and Google Pay methods don't move (Shopify developer docs, October 2026). Between two Shopify stores the rules change again: see moving subscriptions from one Shopify store to another.

Can card data move when the processor changes?

Card data can move when the processor changes, even though tokens can't, through a Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant export from the old processor. Stripe says it will "work with your new processor's team to securely transfer your credit card data" (Stripe, October 2026). Stripe sends card data only to a processor at PCI Data Security Standard Level 1, and it excludes payment details customers saved with Stripe's Link checkout. Braintree imports and exports card data with no fee, but says "we cannot migrate subscription or transaction information" (Braintree, October 2026).

Into Shopify, Shopify Professional Services migrates card numbers as a paid service, on Shopify Plus or Enterprise only (Shopify Help Center, October 2026). If your processor isn't one of Shopify's four, Skio's advice is to move the payment data first to a compatible gateway "such as Stripe or Authorize.net" (Skio Help Center, October 2026). So the processor question comes before the platform question, because it decides which of these routes is open to you.

Which payment methods break when the account changes?

PayPal billing agreements, wallet tokens and bank-account debits break when the account or processor behind them changes, because each is tied to the account or processor that created it. Shopify: "PayPal billing agreements belong to the account that created them. If the new account can't use the previous account's agreements, then existing renewals can fail even when new PayPal checkouts work" (Shopify Help Center, October 2026). Shopify Professional Services can't migrate PayPal billing agreements, wallets such as Venmo, Apple Pay and Google Pay, or bank account information. Braintree excludes Apple Pay and Google Pay from its exports, because their network tokens are "not transferrable between providers" (Braintree, October 2026). Braintree also says a stored bank debit is an agreement "to be charged only by that processor", which is why it asks merchants to accept extra legal terms before it migrates one.

Those subscribers re-enter a payment method, and timing matters. Shopify warns that repeated failed renewals can pause, skip or cancel a subscription, and "Updating a payment method can't restore a cancelled subscription contract" (Shopify Help Center). So ask before the first renewal, with subscriber messages that don't read as a cancellation, and hold your migration agency to a card-retention rate written into scope.

When should the payment side of the migration wait?

The payment side of the migration should wait whenever another payment change would share its window, because each change hides the other's failures.