Failed payments on Shopify subscriptions: retries and what happens next

A subscriber’s card gets declined, and the next delivery does not go out. What happens next depends on settings you can change, and on a decision you make in advance: what should happen when every retry has failed.

What a failed attempt is

Each charge on a subscription is a billing attempt on the subscription contract, as the overview of how Shopify subscriptions work explains. When one fails, Shopify’s developer documentation describes the webhook as “Occurs when a billing attempt fails”. Its example error is “Payment method was declined by processor” (Subscription contracts).

Shopify’s developer pages for contracts don’t mention retries. The retry controls are in the Subscriptions app, covered next.

Retry settings

Shopify’s help page on managing subscriptions says merchants can “adjust the number of billing reattempts and the interval between reattempts in the case of a failed payment capture” (Managing Shopify Subscriptions). The settings are labelled “Number of retry attempts” and “Days between payment retry attempts”.

The page doesn’t state a default for either one. Open your own settings and write the values down, because a number you have not seen is a number you can’t plan around.

Here is how two settings turn into dates: A payment fails on day 0. With 3 retry attempts set 4 days apart, the retries fall on day 4, day 8 and day 12, and the final action applies if the last retry fails. Worked example (made up)

The final action

The same page says: “You can also choose to skip, pause, or cancel the subscription when all retry attempts have failed.” The setting is labeled “Action when all retry attempts have failed”. The page adds: “A notification is sent to your customer in each case.”

Shopify’s page doesn’t define the three choices. Before you rely on one, check what it does in your own store, because cancelling may be harder to take back than skipping.

What a sample app does

A documentation site hosted on Mintlify describes a “subscriptions reference app” and lists example settings. The page does not call itself official Shopify documentation, so treat it as community material. It lists 3 attempts, 7 days between retries and “cancel” as the final action, and says “Cancelled contracts cannot be reactivated”.

Those are the sample app’s example values and apply to that app only. They show what a complete setup has to decide: how many tries, how far apart, and what happens at the end.

Payment failure or customer choice

A failed payment and a choice to leave can look the same in a list of lost subscribers. They call for different responses, so it helps to read the signs. This is our reasoning, and it is not a finding from a study.

• A failed billing attempt, and the customer keeps ordering elsewhere. This points to a payment problem. The person still wants your product.
• Repeated skips, then one-time orders of the same product. This points to a choice. The person still wants the product and has decided to buy it differently.

We don’t quote a share of lost subscriptions that comes from failed payments. The figures we found come from vendor surveys and blog posts, and none had a method we could check.

Check for a second account

When a subscription ends after failed payments, a customer who keeps buying may be doing so under a second profile. The subscription profile then looks like a lost customer, and the other profile holds the proof that they are still buying.

In MergeGuard’s demo store: 412 subscribers → 38 with a second account → 21 showing signs Demo store (Northsail Supply). The guide on subscribers who buy outside their subscription shows how to count them in your own store.