How to Retry Failed Payment on Stripe

What Happens When a Stripe Payment Fails?

When a customer's payment fails in Stripe, retrying the charge is your first line of defense

against involuntary churn. Stripe offers several ways to retry—from manual one-click retries

to automated machine learning-driven Smart Retries. And for businesses that want to

maximize recovery, AI-powered platforms like FlyCode take retries to an entirely different

level.

Start Recovering More Revenue →

3 Ways to Retry Failed Payments on Stripe

Choose the method that matches your business size and recovery goals:

Manual Retry

Click-by-click retries through the Stripe Dashboard. Good for occasional failures or small businesses.

Limited Scale

Stripe Smart Retries

Automated ML-based retry timing across Stripe's entire network. The baseline for subscription businesses.

35-40% Recovery

AI-Powered FlyCode

Custom AI models trained on your specific business data. Maximizes recovery with intelligent timing and backup cards.

55-65% Recovery

Recommended

Top 8 Strategies

Method 1: Manual Retry via the Stripe Dashboard

The simplest approach for one-off situations:

Step-by-Step Instructions

→

Navigate to Payments → Invoices in your Stripe Dashboard

→

Find the failed invoice (filter by status to show only past due or failed invoices)

→

Click on the specific invoice to open it

→

Click the "Retry payment" button

Alternative: Retry from Customer Profile

Go to Customers → locate the specific customer → find the failed charge under their Payments section → attempt the charge again.

The Limitation: Manual retries are fine for one-off situations, but they don't scale. If you have dozens or hundreds of failed payments per

month, clicking through each one isn't sustainable—and the timing of your retry is arbitrary rather than optimized.

Method 2: Stripe's Automatic Retry Options

Stripe provides two automatic retry approaches, configurable under Settings → Subscriptions and Emails → Manage Failed Payments:

Smart Retries (Recommended Default)

Stripe's machine learning system that uses data across the entire Stripe network to determine the optimal time to retry each failed payment. When

enabled, Stripe handles retry timing automatically.

Best Practice

Smart Retries is the recommended default for most businesses, and it's significantly better than fixed-interval schedules. Smart Retries

typically recover around 35–40% of failed payments.

Custom Retry Schedule

If you prefer control over timing, you can disable Smart Retries and set your own schedule. You define how many retry attempts to make and how many

days between each attempt.

Example Configuration

Retry after 3 days, then 5 days, then 7 days. After all attempts are exhausted, Stripe takes the action you've configured (cancel subscription,

mark as unpaid, etc.).

→

Go to your Stripe Dashboard

→

Click Settings

→

Find "Subscriptions and emails" under the Billing section

→

Configure your retry rules under "Manage failed payments"

Method 3: AI-Powered Retries with FlyCode

Here's where recovery rates jump from 35–40% to 55–65% and beyond.

FlyCode connects to your Stripe account through a native app integration (setup takes hours, not weeks) and replaces generic retry logic with AI models

trained on your specific business data.

What Makes FlyCode's Retries Different

Predictive, Not Scheduled

FlyCode doesn't retry on a schedule—it predicts. The system analyzes decline code, card type, issuing bank, customer geography, timezone, and historical behavior to determine the exact moment when a retry is most likely to succeed.

Automatic Backup Cards

If the primary card continues to fail, FlyCode automatically routes the charge to a backup card the customer already has on file. This is a simple toggle—no code required—and one of the highest-impact recovery mechanisms available.

Dynamic Routing

FlyCode's models leverage dynamic routing, sending each retry through the payment path with the highest approval probability. This is fundamentally different from simply retrying the same card through

the same path at a different time.

Custom ML Models

AI models trained specifically on your business data, not generic patterns across all of Stripe. This means better predictions for your unique customer base and payment patterns.

When Should You Retry? Timing Matters More Than You Think

The Biggest Mistake

The biggest mistake businesses make with retries is treating timing as an afterthought. Retrying on fixed intervals (every 3, 5, or 7 days) is better than

nothing, but it ignores critical signals about when a payment is actually likely to succeed.

Insufficient Funds

The optimal retry time correlates with paycheck deposit patterns—beginning and middle of the month tend to have higher success rates.

Do Not Honor

Sometimes waiting 24–48 hours is enough for the bank's temporary hold to clear.

Expired Cards

No amount of retrying will help—you need the customer to update their payment method or you need to charge a backup card.

This is exactly the kind of nuance that AI-powered systems excel at. FlyCode's models learn these patterns from every transaction and continuously

refine their predictions.

The Complete Guide

How Many Retries Should You Allow?

There's a balance to strike. Too few retries and you leave recoverable revenue on the table. Too many and you risk triggering fraud detection atthe issuing bank.

Industry Best Practice

4-8

Retry attempts recommended

2-4

Weeks spread across

But the number matters less than the intelligence behind each attempt. A well-timed retry on attempt 2 is worth more than a poorly timed retry on

attempt 7.

Beyond Retries: A Complete Recovery Strategy

Retries are essential, but they're one piece of the puzzle. A complete failed payment recovery strategy also includes:

Coordinated Dunning Emails

Emails that are coordinated with retry

timing and personalized to the failure

reason, not generic templates sent on fixed

schedules.

Recovery Analytics

Clear visibility into what's failing, why it's

failing, and what's being recovered so you

can optimize your strategy.

Failed Payment Walls

Prompts that ask customers to update their

card before accessing your product,

creating natural recovery moments.

Backup Payment Routing

Automatically tries alternate cards on file

when the primary payment method fails

repeatedly.

FlyCode handles all of this in a single platform, starting from the moment you connect your Stripe account.

FlyCode Case Studies

Capsho boost recovery rate from 63% to 91%

By integrating FlyCode into their Stripe account, Capsho achieved a substantial uplift in revenue with a clear ROI.

>23X

Increase in payment recovery

45%

ROI

GitBook boost ARR by 8% with FlyCode

GitBook is a modern documentation platform that helps teams create, maintain, and share beautiful product documentation. With thousands of businesses worldwide relying on GitBook for their technical docs, the platform has become essential infrastructure for developer-focused organizations serving customers in 100+ countries.

>11x

Increase in payment recovery

10.5%

ROI

Rewardful recovers 29% more revenue with FlyCode

Rewardful helps you to manage your affiliate and customer referral programs seamlessly and get started with the affiliate marketing software built for SaaS professionals and marketers.