Smart retries provide an intelligent, data-driven approach to recovering failed subscription payments. The system automatically selects the best time to retry a payment based on multiple factors, rather than following a fixed schedule. These factors include product pricing, billing cycle, customer behavior, payment history, and location. They also cover account age, subscription patterns, payment method, decline type, and timing indicators such as the day of the week.
Based on this data, the algorithm determines the most effective retry moment for each case.
Smart retries have a number of benefits:
- Context-aware optimization
Applies retry logic based on decline types, payment history, timing, and more. - Revenue protection
Automatically retries failed payments to prevent revenue loss and ensure stable income. - Customer retention
Helps avoid unintentional service loss due to payment issues, reducing involuntary churn. - Operational efficiency
Eliminates manual tracking of retries and selecting the best strategy.
How smart retries work
Smart retries use an intelligent algorithm that adapts retry timing based on payment history, decline patterns, and other related details.
- Payments to retry - temporary issues like insufficient funds or card activity limits.
- Payments not to retry - permanent issues like expired cards, closed accounts, or fraud.
The process unfolds as follows:
- When a payment fails due to a transaction decline, the subscription goes into the
redemption
status.
- If it is a decline that can be retried, the system schedules a retry based on an intelligent algorithm.
- If it is a decline that should not be retried, no retry is made.
- The set number of retries is attempted within a defined period.
- If the retry is successful, the payment is recovered, and the subscription is active .
- If the invoice remains unpaid after all retries, it is marked as not paid, and the subscription status changes to cancelled .
You can decide whether to grant access during the retry period. Solidgate provides a subscription status that indicates when the subscription is in redemption. If you choose to allow access, include the retry period in the next billing cycle.
The timing and frequency of these retries are automatically optimized to align with the subscription billing cycle and business preferences. This approach ensures that subscriptions are not retried too often or too infrequently.
If in your business model you prefer to:
- include redemption into the next billing period, retries occur only within the billing period, and follow the set retry count.
- exclude redemption from the next billing period, the system slightly extends the retry window based on the billing cycle length. However, it never exceeds the configured retry period or retry count.
Additionally, when a payment fails due to
Guide
Analyze cancellations and learn about cancellation reasons.
decline codes
that should not be retried, retries stop automatically. The subscription status changes from
redemption
to
cancelled
because the invoice cannot be paid.
Configure smart retries
Smart retries are enabled by default with four retries within four weeks. These settings can be modified based on your business requirements.
- Go to Billing > Billing settings.
- Navigate to the Smart retries section.
- Select the number of retry attempts from the available options.
- Select the timeframe within which retries should be processed from the options.
Your changes are saved and applied automatically.
Apply smart retries to product
Based on your preferred flow, you can apply smart strategies to products via API or the Solidgate HUB.
retry_mode field to
smart
in your request.
next_charge_at value if it is unavailable in real time.
In this case, you need to request the
subscription status
API
after 5–15 seconds of receiving the webhook to retrieve the next_charge_at information.
In some cases, it may take up to 15 minutes, so retrying requests is recommended.This logic is being improved, and changes are coming soon.
- Go to Billing > Products.
- Find the needed product and click on it.
- In the Product section, click on Edit.
- Next to Retry mode, select Smart retries.
- Click on Save changes.
Once you start using smart retries with your products, all new subscriptions created with such products use the intelligent retry approach automatically. This method increases the chances of recovering failed payments, helping businesses reduce revenue loss and improve customer retention.