Payments can fail for reasons like insufficient funds or expired cards. This article explains how Stora automatically retries failed payments and how your customers can fix them
What happens when a payment fails
When a scheduled payment fails, Stora starts an automatic recovery flow for that invoice.
In most cases:
Stora detects that the payment has failed.
Stora emails your customer about the failed payment.
Stora retries the payment at selected times.
Your customer can update their payment details or pay manually.
If a retry succeeds, the invoice is marked as paid. If not, the invoice stays overdue.
This reduces the amount of manual chasing you need to do for routine failed payments.
💡 Stora’s automatic recovery typically recovers around 56% of failed card payments, so many issues are resolved without your team needing to step in.
How Stora retries failed payments
Stora uses smart retry logic to improve the chance that a failed payment will succeed later.
Stora automatically retries failed payments at optimised times, rather than immediately.
The goal is to catch moments when funds are more likely to be available, or the bank will approve the transaction.
If a retry succeeds, no further action is needed from you or your customer.
If all retries fail, the invoice will remain overdue until the customer pays or you take further action.
⚠️ By default, Stripe is set up to cancel subscriptions after 8 failed payment attempts. We recommend changing the settings to stop this from happening. View recommended settings here.
How customers are notified about failed payments
When a payment fails, Stora will email your customer to let them know what happened and what to do next.
You can remind customers that they can always see their invoices from My account on your Storefront. From there, they can review due and overdue invoices and pay using any payment methods you have enabled.
How customers can fix failed payments
Your customers can often resolve failed payments without contacting you.
They can:
Sign in to My account on your Storefront to see their invoices and payment status.
Update their saved card or payment details in their customer portal.
Pay overdue invoices using any available payment method you have enabled.
If their card has expired or been replaced, updated card details may be applied automatically where supported by their payment provider.
💡 Encourage customers to use their online account to update payment details and pay overdue invoices. This reduces inbound calls and emails to your team.
What this reduces for you
Using Stora’s recovery tools helps you spend less time chasing failed payments.
It reduces:
Manual retrying of failed payments.
Time spent contacting customers about overdue invoices.
Issues caused by expired or replaced cards.
Ongoing tracking of failed invoices across your sites.
You still control how you follow up with long‑term overdue customers, but Stora handles the routine recovery work in the background.