Failed payments are an inevitable part of accepting cards online — expired cards, insufficient funds, fraud blocks, network issues. A robust dunning strategy recovers most of them without manual chasing.
Categories of Failure
- Card declined (soft): Insufficient funds, temporary fraud check — retry later usually succeeds.
- Card declined (hard): Closed account, do-not-honour — must ask customer for a new card.
- Card expired: Update the card before retrying.
- Network or 3DS: Often a temporary glitch; immediate retry usually works.
Default Dunning Flow
- Day 0: First failure. Retry once after 24 hours; email the customer.
- Day 3: Second retry. Second email with a “Update card” deep link.
- Day 7: Third retry. Final notice email warning of service suspension.
- Day 10: Service suspended. Customer prompted to update card on next sign-in.
- Day 30: Subscription cancelled and archived. Manual reactivation only.
Configuring
Open Site Settings → eCommerce → Failed Payments. Adjust retry days, email template names, and the suspension/cancellation thresholds.
Worked Examples
- SaaS: Three retries over 10 days then downgrade to free tier rather than full cancel.
- eCommerce: Single retry; on failure the order is cancelled — re-order required.
- Membership site: Long grace (30 days) to retain member relationships; aggressive email cadence to recover.
- Donation platform: Single retry then quietly fail — chasing donors over £5 looks bad.
Tip: Schedule retries for early in the customer's billing cycle (e.g. morning of payday) — recovery rates jump by 20–30% on these days.