Recharge’s Failed Payment Recovery feature helps reduce churn by automatically retrying failed charges and notifying customers when their payment method is declined.

This guide explains how the basic Failed Payment Recovery works and how to configure the feature for your store. 

How it works

Recharge’s basic Failed Payment Recovery tool automatically retries failed payment attempts on a fixed schedule, while also sending an email to notify customers when their payment methods fail.

If a customer's order fails due to a payment error, Recharge retries it the next day. After that, Recharge continues retrying the charge based on your store’s automatic retry settings, at 4 PM ET on each scheduled retry date.

For a more optimized approach, consider using advanced Failed Payment Recovery, which uses machine learning to identify the best times to retry payments or notify customers. Fill out the Failed Payment Recovery interest form for more information.

Recharge automatically retries the most common charge error types. However, some errors require manual retries due to configuration issues or because you or the customer must take action. See Error types for a full list of errors that Recharge retries automatically and those that require manual intervention.

Notifications

Customers receive the card declined email the first time their card is declined and Recharge cannot process the order. Recharge doesn’t send a new notification after every retry. Instead, Recharge sends another card declined email only if at least seven days have passed since the last one.

Example

If you set your retry logic to retry a failed charge every five days, Recharge sends an initial card declined email on the day the charge fails. Recharge then retries the charge the next day.

If the second attempt also fails, the next retry happens on day six. Because the customer already received a card declined email within the last seven days, Recharge doesn’t send another notification at that time. On the retry attempt on day 11, Recharge sends a new card declined email, since more than seven days have passed since the last one.

Scenario: Charge fails on April 1 and the retry logic is to retry every 5 days

Step 1 - Create the basic Failed Payment Recovery strategy

1. Click Retain in the merchant portal and select Failed Payment Recovery.
2. Click Create from template.
3. Select Basic recovery strategy.
4. Select Not right now on the Failed Payment Recovery pop-up.
5. Click Recharge will retry failed charges under Failed charges.
6. Select the interval between each retry attempt from the Retry charge interval dropdown.
7. Under Maximum number of retries, select the number of retry attempts before retries stop.
8. Confirm how Recharge should handle orders after the last retry under When maximum number of retries are reached. See definitions below.
9. Click Save.

Step 2 - Customize the Card declined notification

1. Open the Settings page in your merchant portal and select Notifications.
2. Under Customer Notifications, click on Card declined.
3. Make adjustments in the textboxes. You can also use variables.
4. Click Save.

Max retry options and definitions