Recharge

Overview

Recharge is the leading subscription management and recurring billing platform for e-commerce brands operating on Shopify, BigCommerce, and headless commerce stacks. The platform handles the full subscription lifecycle — subscription product configuration, recurring checkout flows, payment processing, customer self-service portals, dunning management for failed payments, and subscription analytics. Recharge processes billions of dollars in recurring revenue annually and is deeply integrated into the checkout infrastructure of DTC subscription brands in categories including consumables, apparel, pet products, and health and wellness.

Recharge acts as a payment service provider and data processor on behalf of the merchant. It holds PCI DSS Level 1 compliance and provides a Data Processing Agreement for GDPR-compliant data handling.

What This Script Does

Recharge scripts appear on merchant websites as integral checkout and customer portal components.

Subscription checkout widget: Recharge intercepts the standard e-commerce checkout flow for subscription products, rendering plan selection (one-time vs. subscribe and save, billing frequency options) within the add-to-cart and checkout experience.

• Scripts loaded: assets.rechargeapps.com/bundles/recharge.js — Recharge's primary checkout script. Loads on product pages and checkout pages on Shopify stores with Recharge installed. Also loads from recharge.com CDN endpoints for headless implementations.
• Cookies set:
  • _shopify_sa_t, _shopify_sa_p — These are Shopify-native session attribution cookies that Recharge interacts with during checkout. They are first-party cookies on the merchant's myshopify.com domain or custom domain. Expiry: session or up to 30 minutes.
  • recharge_distinct_id — First-party persistent cookie. Identifies the customer session for subscription state management during multi-step checkout. Expiry: 30 days.
  • recharge_session — First-party session cookie. Maintains the active checkout session state. Expiry: session.

Customer portal (portal.rechargeapps.com or custom domain): Recharge provides a white-labelled self-service portal where subscribers manage their subscriptions — updating frequency, skipping orders, swapping products, updating payment methods, and cancelling.

• Authentication cookies (recharge_portal_session) maintain the authenticated subscriber session within the portal. First-party on the portal subdomain. Expiry: session.
• No advertising or analytics cookies are set within the portal.

Data collected: Subscription plan selections, billing frequency preferences, cart contents, payment tokens (via PCI-compliant tokenisation), and subscriber authentication state. No browsing behaviour outside the subscription checkout flow is collected. No advertising, retargeting, or cross-site tracking occurs.

Consent & Compliance

Consent category: Functional

Recharge provides core e-commerce functionality — subscription checkout and customer subscription management. Its cookies are session-scoped authentication and state management cookies required for the checkout and portal to function correctly.

Under GDPR and ePrivacy, Recharge's session and authentication cookies qualify as strictly necessary under the ePrivacy Directive's exemption. They are required to deliver the subscription checkout service the customer is actively using. Payment processing cookies are necessary for transaction completion. No consent is required for these functional components.

Under CCPA/CPRA, Recharge acts as a service provider to the merchant, processing subscriber personal information (payment details, subscription history, delivery addresses) solely to provide the contracted subscription management service. Service provider status exempts this processing from "sale" classification.

Recharge is PCI DSS Level 1 certified. It provides a Data Processing Agreement (DPA) covering GDPR Article 28 processor obligations for EU merchants. Recharge participates in the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and offers Standard Contractual Clauses for EEA data transfers.

Should You Block This Without Consent?

No. Recharge is essential e-commerce infrastructure for merchants offering subscription products. Its cookies are strictly necessary for the subscription checkout and customer portal to function. Blocking Recharge breaks the subscription purchase flow and removes customers' ability to manage their subscriptions. The platform performs no advertising, tracking, or behavioural profiling.