What happens when a customer's subscription payment fails
Payments
A parent's card expires, or a payment plan installment does not go through. Here is what happens next.
When a customer's payment fails
Parents get access to your course or product straight away when they buy. If a later payment fails, up to three more attempts are made:
- Card (Stripe): the timing follows the retry settings in your own Stripe account, either Smart Retries or your own schedule.
- PayPal: PayPal handles the retries, within a maximum of 5 days. Attempts can be a few hours apart, and SleepPRO™ cannot change PayPal's rules.
If the payment still does not go through, access to the course is suspended.
By default, access starts as soon as the order is placed, even if the first payment fails. To give access only once the first payment arrives, tick Grant access only after receiving the first payment on your payment page. See How do you control access to subscription resources?
Payment plans
For a parent on a payment plan, there are up to four attempts in total, the first one plus three retries:
- Card: timing follows your Stripe settings.
- PayPal: within 5 days in total.
If no payment arrives, the plan is canceled.
For card payments, Stripe decides the retry timing based on your settings. With Smart Retries, Stripe picks the best moments. For a fixed schedule, such as 3, 5 and 7 days, set a custom retry policy in Stripe under Settings, then Subscriptions and emails.
Other payment providers
- Mollie: no automatic retries. The customer pays again themselves.
- Mercado Pago cards: 3 retries at fixed intervals. Mercado Pago support can tell you the timing.
- Mercado Pago Boleto and Pix: 3 retries, 7 days apart.
- Razorpay: 3 retries, 1 day apart, after the first attempt. You can retry sooner from your Razorpay dashboard, without extra attempts.
- Flutterwave: 3 retries, 30 minutes apart, after the first attempt.
- GoCardless: 3 retries. The timing depends on the customer's bank. You can set the number of attempts and intervals per currency in GoCardless, and SleepPRO™ follows them.
- Xendit: 3 retries, 7 days apart, after the first attempt.
- Secure and Pay: no automatic retries. The customer is notified, and the subscription is canceled after 30 days without payment.
- Paystack: no automatic retries.
When no payment arrives after all attempts, the subscription is canceled automatically.
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