Failed payment recovery for Recurly
By Jordan Mederich · Co-Founder & CEOReviewed by Sean WeasUpdated 3 min readSummarize with AI
Quick answer
Recurly runs configurable dunning — a schedule of automated retries plus payment-reminder emails over a fixed recovery window, then it expires or cancels the subscription. But the comms are email-only, the retries follow your fixed rules rather than the decline, and after the dunning window closes there's no win-back. Revatto re-attempts the charge through Recurly's API on AI-timed schedules and runs email + SMS + human outreach on top, done for you. You pay 20% of the first recovered payment, $0 setup, $0 monthly, cancel anytime.
The gap Recurly leaves open
What Recurly recovers on its own
- Recurly's dunning management re-attempts a declined transaction on a configurable retry schedule before it stops trying.
- Automated payment-reminder and failed-payment emails go out across the recovery window, linking the customer to update their billing details.
- The recovery window, retry cadence, and end state (expire vs. cancel) are configured per subscription plan.
- Recurly's Account Updater can refresh saved card details when an issuer reissues a card, reducing some avoidable declines.
stops at
adds- Recurly stops at: Recurly's recovery comms are email-only — payment-reminder and failed-payment emails, but no SMS and no phone outreach.Revatto adds: Email + SMS + a human recovery specialist, all sending under your brand.
- Recurly stops at: Recurly's retries fire on the fixed schedule you configured, not on what the decline actually was.Revatto adds: AI-timed retries through Recurly's API that adapt to the decline, plus cross-client learning from millions of recovered payments.
- Recurly stops at: When the dunning window ends, Recurly expires or cancels the subscription — no further attempts, no win-back.Revatto adds: Recovery continues past Recurly's last attempt, with human follow-up that actually reconnects the card.
- Recurly stops at: Dunning is a fire-and-forget background process — you don't see which declines are being worked or why a retry failed.Revatto adds: A transparent recovery cadence you can audit, mapping each decline to the right action across stacks.
How Revatto recovers failed Recurly payments
- 1Detect the failure instantlyRevatto ingests Recurly's failed-payment webhook the moment a charge declines — no polling, no delay.
- 2Diagnose the declineRevatto reads Recurly's failure type (e.g. call_issuer, insufficient_funds, expired_card) to tell a soft retry-now from a hard needs-the-customer.
- 3Re-attempt intelligentlyWhere a retry can clear it, Revatto triggers an AI-timed rebill through Recurly's transaction API instead of waiting on the fixed dunning schedule.
- 4Reach the customerWhere a retry won't clear it, email + SMS + a human recovery specialist reach the cardholder under your brand to update the card.
- 5Stop on successWhen Recurly reports the payment succeeded, Revatto ends the sequence automatically — no double-charge, no stray outreach.
How a Recurly decline maps across stacks
A do-not-honor decline on Recurly. Recovery looks the same across every stack Revatto runs on — here is how the same issuer decision is named on each.
ProcessorCodeWhat it’s called
ISO 8583
Code05
CalledDo Not Honor
Codedo_not_honor
CalledDo not honor
Code2000
CalledDo Not Honorgeneric issuer decline
Code5
CalledDo not honorresponseReasonCode 5
Code201
CalledDo not honor
Codedo_not_honor
CalledDo not honor
Codecall_issuer
CalledCall issuer
Code05
CalledDo not honorISO 8583 adapterCode 05 (refer to issuer)
CodeDO_NOT_HONOR
CalledDo not honor
Codedo_not_honor
CalledDo not honornormalized — no processor-specific code (free-text categorized)
Codedo_not_honor
CalledDo not honornormalized — matched by substring rule, no processor-specific code
See what Revatto would recover from Recurly
Failed payments recovered automatically — no engineering, no manual chasing. We do the work; you keep the revenue.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Recurly exposes a programmatic transaction API, so Revatto can trigger a rebill on a recovery-optimized, AI-timed schedule — not just wait on Recurly's fixed dunning retries or send a reminder email.
No — it works on top of it. Recurly's dunning handles the scheduled retries and reminder emails; Revatto adds the channels Recurly doesn't (SMS and human outreach), re-attempts on a cadence that adapts to the decline, and continues recovery past Recurly's final attempt.
No. Recurly's failed-payment communication is email-only — payment-reminder and failed-payment emails. SMS and phone follow-up are exactly what Revatto adds.
Recurly stops trying and expires or cancels the subscription per your plan settings. Revatto keeps recovering past that point with human follow-up to reconnect the card.