From 4.7, subscriptions and memberships has been rewritten for Drupal E-Commerce. In E-Commerce 4.6, there was some support for recurring payments, however this did not cover many user requirements and including integration with memberships.

The new code is split into the following modules:

Module Function Description
ec_recurring Recurring products Manages product expiry schedules.
ec_roles Roles / memberships Performs role changes that at product purchase and expiry.
ec_useracc Account generation Facilitates creation of user accounts once a user buys a product that is creational.

All of these modules can be installed by downloading and installing E-Commerce, and activating the modules above via administer » modules

Developers can monitor the expiration schedules via administer » store » settings » show schedule list which becomes available when the ec_devel module is installed.