Passive vs active recovery
Passive recovery is what happens automatically: smart retries, network-level card updaters, issuer-side fraud rule resets. Active recovery is what requires customer action: email reminders, SMS nudges, self-service update links. You need both. Passive recovery handles 30-40% of failures with zero customer touch. Active recovery handles another 30%. The remaining 30% are genuine churn that no system will save.
The payment account updater
Visa, Mastercard, and Amex all run automatic account updater services. When a card is reissued, the new number gets pushed to merchants who are enrolled. Shopify Payments has this built in for most card types, which means a meaningful chunk of "expired card" failures fix themselves without the customer doing anything. If you're on Stripe, you need to enable it in the dashboard; it's not on by default.
- Visa Account Updater (VAU)
- Mastercard Automatic Billing Updater (ABU)
- Amex Cardrefresher
Retry cadence that respects the issuer
Card issuers track how often a merchant retries a declined charge. Retry too aggressively and they'll start declining you on principle, even when the customer has funds. The sweet spot is 3-5 retries spread over 14-21 days, with retries timed to avoid back-to-back attempts within 24 hours. SimpleSubscription's retry engine adapts the cadence to the decline reason, which keeps your merchant reputation clean across issuers.
Self-service is non-negotiable
Every dunning email needs a one-click link to a hosted page where the customer can update their card without logging in. Forcing customers to find their account, remember a password, navigate to billing, then update payment will lose you 40% of the recoveries you'd otherwise get. The link should be tokenised, expire after 7 days, and pre-fill everything except the new card number.
- Tokenised link, no login required
- Mobile-optimised card form
- Confirmation email after successful update
Measuring recovery correctly
Track recovery rate as "failed charges that eventually succeeded within 30 days" divided by "total failed charges". Anything below 50% means you have a real problem; 60-70% is healthy; above 75% is excellent. Don't confuse this with churn rate, and don't let your payment processor's vanity metrics distract you. The number that matters is dollars recovered per dollar at risk.