Automate payment retries

Although payments can fail for a number of reasons, many of them are recoverable. You can automatically retry failed payments with Stripe, without writing code.

Configure the settings in the Retries tab of the Revenue recovery Dashboard.

Stripe doesn’t retry payments for:

• Failures where the issuer provided a hard decline code
• Unavailable payment methods
• Detached connected accounts (Connect only)

Stripe recommends using Smart Retries, but you can also create a custom retry schedule.

Payment method ordering

Stripe uses the first payment instrument from this ordered list in retries:

1. subscription.default_payment_method
2. subscription.default_source
3. customer.invoice_settings.default_payment_method
4. customer.default_source

When you update payment methods after a failed payment attempt, update the field where the previous payment failed. For example, if a subscription has a default_payment_method, but you only update customer.invoice_settings.default_payment_method, Stripe continues to retry on the subscription’s default_payment_method.

Smart Retries

Using AI, Smart Retries chooses the best times to retry failed payment attempts to increase the chance of successfully paying an invoice. The AI model behind Smart Retries uses time-dependent, dynamic signals, such as:

• The number of different devices that have presented a given payment method in the last N hours.
• The best time to pay (payments made for debit cards in certain countries might be slightly more successful at 12:01 AM in local time zones).

Based on a combination of these factors, Stripe intelligently assesses when to retry payments. We continuously learn from new purchaser behaviours and transactions, which provide for a more targeted approach over traditional rules-based payment retry logic.

Smart Retries reattempts the charge according to your specifications for the number of retries and the maximum duration. You can also use automations to create different retry policies for different customer segments.

You can override this behaviour by disabling Smart Retries and defining your own custom retry rules. When you enable dunning, the next_payment_attempt attribute indicates when the next collection attempt will be.

Direct Debit Billing Retries

Enable Direct Debit retries to have Stripe automatically retry failed Direct Debit payments caused by insufficient funds. You can turn on retries for recurring subscription invoices, one-off invoices, or both. The table below provides details for each of the Direct Debits.

Webhook events

For both Smart Retries and custom retry schedules, Stripe reattempts the charge according to your specified schedule. Use the invoice.payment_failed webhook to receive subscription payment failure events and retry attempt updates.

The attempt_count attribute on the invoice.payment_failed webhook indicates how many attempts have been made so far. If a failure returns a hard decline code, we can’t retry invoice payment without a new payment method. Retries continue to be scheduled, and attempt_count continues to increment, but retries only execute after detecting a new payment method. Unexecuted retries don’t create a new Charge.

The next_payment_attempt attribute on the invoice indicates the date when Stripe will attempt the next collection. For automations users, next_payment_attempt is no longer set in invoice.payment_failed webhooks but is set in invoice.updated webhooks.

Hard decline codes

If the card issuer returns the payment with a hard decline code, then Stripe can’t automatically retry the payment. These codes are one of the following:

• incorrect_number
• lost_card
• pickup_card
• stolen_card
• revocation_of_authorization
• revocation_of_all_authorizations
• authentication_required
• highest_risk_level

For these failures, the scheduled retries continue but the payment only executes if you obtain a new payment method.