less than a minute read • Updated 21 minutes ago
Failed payments overview
An overview of how Foxy handles failed subscription payments, including retries, reminder emails, past due amounts, and automatic cancellation.
Failed subscription payments are a normal part of running a recurring billing business. Credit cards expire, get canceled, or become overdrafted. If you have 100 customers on a monthly subscription, expect a handful of failures each month.
By default, Foxy does not automatically retry failed payments or send reminder emails to customers. Both must be configured in your store's advanced settings under Recurring Billing Settings.
For more advanced integrations — such as triggering custom workflows when a payment fails — you can use the Subscription XML Datafeed to receive real-time subscription data and build your own dunning logic.
What happens when a payment fails
When a subscription fails to process, Foxy will:
Foxy does not automatically notify the customer or retry the payment unless you have configured those settings.
Key concepts
Past due amount
The outstanding balance on a subscription that has failed to bill. Can be configured to increase with each failure or be replaced by the most recent missed amount. Collected automatically if the Charge past due amounts setting is enabled, or when a customer updates their billing information via a sub_token link.
Retry schedule
A configurable list of days after the initial failure on which Foxy will automatically reattempt the charge. For example, 1, 3, 5, 15, 30 would attempt collection on the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 15th, and 30th days after failure.
Reminder emails
Emails sent to customers on a configurable schedule to notify them of a failed payment and prompt them to update their billing information.
Cancellation schedule
A single number of days after the initial failure at which Foxy will automatically cancel the subscription if no successful payment has been made.
Expiring card reminders
Emails sent to customers a configurable number of days before the end of the month in which their card expires, prompting them to update their payment information before a renewal fails.