Credits empower you to retain customer value by offering credit for refunds, customer support resolutions, and more. Credits can be applied to customers' accounts for their next recurring subscription order.

This article provides an overview of the Credits, details on how it works, and limitations. 

Before you start

• Interested in using Credits? Connect with your CSM, or navigate to the Rewards page under Retain in the Recharge merchant portal to express your interest, and one of Recharge's team members will be in touch.
• All customer portal themes are compatible with Credits. Recharge recommends using the Affinity customer portal theme as it has more features and provides a better customer experience when using Credits.
• By default, only store owners can configure and store credits. Enable Account Permissions and assign account users that can provide customers with credits or rewards.

How it works

Manually or automatically issue credits if you have Rewards enabled. Once credits are issued to a customer’s account, the total credit balance is automatically applied to any eligible upcoming recurring charge of any purchase type. Depending on your purchase-type charges, these can include subscriptions and one-time products.

You can track and view the status of credits at any time in the Recharge merchant portal and use the Export Builder to export credit adjustment data for your store. For more information, see Merchant experience overview.

Platform-specific explanation

Credit node

Use the Credit node to automatically issue credits to customers as a fixed amount or as a percentage on an order, and set an expiration date if necessary. Credits can be auto-applied to the customer's next queued order.

Refer to Nodes to learn more about how nodes can be utilized when creating a Subscription Experience. 

Customer experience

Customers can view their available credit balance in all customer portal themes. The customer’s credit balance appears only after the credit is initially added to their account. Once a credit is added to a customer’s account, the credit widget remains in the customer portal regardless of the available balance.

When Recharge processes the customer’s next charge, available credits are automatically applied to the charge from the customer's credit balance.

Affinity

View credits for an upcoming charge

Customers can view their credit balance by clicking View your next order and scrolling to the Credits section of the order page. The Credits section displays the customer’s total available balance.

View credits on the payment methods page

Customers can view their credit balance by clicking Address & payment methods and selecting Manage payment methods. Credit balances are displayed on the payment method page after their initial credit issuance.

View credits applied on previous charges

Customers can view credits applied to previous charges by clicking View previous orders and selecting a recent order. Any credits applied to a charge will display in the charge summary section beneath the Total.

Prima and Novum

Customers using either Prima V5 or Novum can view their credit balances on several different pages of the customer portal:

• Homepage (Prima V5 only)
• Subscriptions and subscription details page
• Delivery schedule and upcoming orders page
• Payment methods page

Purchase history in Prima V5 and Novum will not show credits applied to an order, but when the customer refreshes the page, the available credit balance will update.

Prima V5

Novum

Merchant experience

By default, store owners can create automated credit experiences, apply credits manually, adjust credit balances, and view credit history using the merchant portal and exports. Merchants can even use the Bulk Import tool in the merchant portal to add credit to multiple customer accounts in bulk.

Store owners can update additional staff accounts to manage credit balances and view credit history. For more information on enabling and updating staff permissions, see Managing Recharge user and account permissions.

Issuing credits

Reward customers for their loyalty by building a Credits flow that sends customers credits at key stages of their customer journey. Use Recharge's prebuilt template Credits template to maximize the customer experience. See Issuing credits as a reward for additional information.

Resolve customer issues by offering individual customers a specific credit amount. See Issuing and adjusting credits manually for more details.

Configure the automatic Credits experience for your customers

Offering Credits as a reward to customers requires you to strategically think about the overall experience, as well as the finer details, such as your settings and notifications.

Use the list below to ensure you've successfully updated every aspect of your store before you start offering credits. 

1. Update setting related to Credits
2. Adjust your email notifications and translations
3. Create the automatic flow

View credits

Credit history displays the customer’s transaction history, Credit usage, and any applied notes. You can also use the credit history page to adjust credits.

Use the following steps to view credits issued for your store in the merchant portal:

1. Click Customers in the merchant portal and select Credits from the dropdown.
   • You can also view credits from a specific customer’s profile using the Credits modal and clicking View credit history.
2. To view credit adjustment history, click a Credit ID or use the kebab menu to select View history.

Credits Summary API

The Credit Summary API is available to Pro and Enterprise Plan merchants to allow you to build custom customer experiences using Recharge Credits. For more information, see Retrieve a customer's credit summary.

Considerations

Review the following chart for considerations when using Recharge Credits.