What happens when a client's payment fails?
Understand the past-due state, how Stripe's automatic retries work, how to retry a charge yourself, and what the client sees.
When a subscription charge fails, the subscription moves to past due. Stripe retries the charge automatically on its own schedule, and you can retry it manually as well.
Find past-due subscriptions
- Go to Payments → Subscriptions for every subscription across your packages, or open a package and use the Past due filter tab on its Subscribers list.
- Open the subscriber to see their status, card on file, and payment history.
- Look at the failed invoice in the payment history — it shows Stripe's next automatic retry date.
Retry a failed payment
- Open the subscriber drawer, or go to the client's profile and open the Payments tab.
- Choose Retry payment on the past-due subscription. Each failed invoice in the payment history also has its own Retry button and a Retry payment row-menu item.
- Confirm.
Retrying charges the client's default card on file for the open invoice. On success the subscription returns to active and the client's plan clears its past-due state. Stripe keeps retrying on its own schedule regardless of whether you retry manually.
What the client sees
In the client app, the plan shows Payment failed with an Update card shortcut. The retry date isn't shown to them.
If the card keeps failing, the fix is on their side: they add a new card, or switch their primary card, under Payment Methods in the client app. Subscriptions always charge the primary card.
Failed payments and your notifications
| Event | Notification you get |
|---|---|
| Payment succeeds (one-time, first charge, or renewal) | Payment Received push, plus email if the Payments received email is on |
| Payment fails | None — the subscription shows past due in your lists |
| Automatic or manual retry succeeds | The normal Payment Received notification |
Things to watch out for
- A past-due subscription still holds its place in your lists, but it isn't counted toward a package's client-slots cap — slots are held by active, trialing, and paused subscribers and one-time buyers.
- Retrying isn't a fix for a dead card. If the card is expired or cancelled, the client needs to add a new one in the client app before a retry can succeed.
- Refunding doesn't help a past-due client. A refund returns money for a payment that already succeeded; it doesn't clear an unpaid invoice or cancel the subscription.