Configure Payment Recovery and dunning options
Choose what happens when payment fails for an automatically-collected subscription. You can turn on Tactical Retries, send optimized email notifications, and show retry payment forms in your app or website.
When payment fails for an automatically-collected subscription, the subscription status changes to past due and Payment Recovery, part of Paddle Retain, gets to work to automatically recover the payment for you. This process is called dunning.
You can configure how Payment Recovery notifies customers about failed payments, turn on Tactical Retries, and choose what happens to past due subscriptions when the payment isn't recovered.
How it works
Paddle Retain combines world-class subscription expertise with algorithms that use billions of data points to automatically reduce churn. Paddle Billing is fully integrated with Retain, meaning it automatically handles dunning and retention for you.
Payment Recovery, part of Paddle Retain, automatically recovers subscriptions that are at risk of churning because of payment failure and expired payment methods.
If you use Paddle Billing without integrating with Paddle Retain, failed payments for automatically-collected subscriptions are retried up to seven times over a 30-day window before they're canceled. Turn on Paddle Retain for more comprehensive payment recovery options and control over the customer experience.
To learn more about Payment Recovery, see Payment Recovery
Before you begin
Set up Paddle Retain
If you haven't already, connect Paddle Retain to your billing platform and set up Paddle Retain.
Use Paddle Billing? Billing automatically integrates with Retain, so you're ready to get started. Go to Paddle > Retain > Settings and review your setup.
Check your Retain email settings
Emails sent from Paddle Retain are designed to look like they come from you or someone on your team. Review the email sender and reply-to addresses for your email addresses in Paddle > Retain > Settings under Email sender details.
Pause or cancel past due subscriptions
When all payment recovery attempts are exhausted, Paddle Retain can automatically pause or cancel subscriptions for you. You can choose whether subscriptions should pause or cancel.
Go to Paddle > Retain > Payment recovery.
Select the amount of days in which payment recovery is attempted from the first dropdown under Subscription status.
Choose "Pause subscription" or "Cancel subscription" from the second dropdown under Subscription status.
Click Save when you're done.
Send optimized payment recovery emails
Paddle Retain sends emails to customers to let them know that their renewal wasn't processed successfully.
You can preview messages, but we handle the content for you. Our team of experts have sent millions of messages, testing and optimizing the content and cadence across hundreds of thousands of transactions. We found that plaintext, personal emails work best.
Go to Paddle > Retain > Payment Recovery.
Toggle Payment recovery emails on to send notifications by email.
Click Preview to show a preview of the email that sends.
Turn on payment recovery notifications
Payment recovery notifications reach customers when they're using your product, maximizing the likelihood of payment recovery. They prompt customers to update expired credit cards in your web app or on your commercial website with an unobtrusive notification.
When customers click the link to update, they're presented with a secure form to enter their details there and then — no need to go to another page.
Go to Paddle > Retain > Payment recovery.
Toggle Payment recovery notifications on to prompt customers to update their payment details in-app.
Click Preview to show a preview of the notification that sends.
Turn on Tactical Retries
You only have so many chances to retry a credit card payment. Tactical Retries analyzes billions of credit card transactions across the Retain network and uses algorithms to retry payments at the best time for success. We look at product type, card type, customer location, and more than fifteen other factors to boost payment recovery by an additional 10 to 15 percent.
Go to Paddle > Retain > Payment recovery.
Toggle Tactical retries on.
Send payment recovery messages by SMS
SMS is a reliable way of reaching customers, with 90% of text messages being read within three minutes of receipt. Retain can send text messages to customers to further boost payment recovery, targeting customers at the right time in a highly personalized way.
Messages include a link to update payment information — all handled by Paddle.js on your website, with no sign in required.
Grab a copy of the Retain SMS phone number template and fill it in. Send it to us at sellers@paddle.com.
Fill out the Retain SMS recovery form. We use this information to register your details with Twilio, our SMS provider.
We'll take care of the rest and reach out when you're ready. This may take fifteen business days.
Simulate a payment recovery attempt
Now you've set up Payment Recovery, simulate a payment recovery attempt to see how it looks to customers.