Why did a subscription payment fail?

Introduction

A subscription payment may fail for several reasons — most commonly due to issues with the customer’s payment method. Roadmap automatically handles retries using a process called dunning, but it’s important to understand what causes failures so you can respond or guide customers effectively.

Common reasons subscription payments fail

Here are the most frequent causes:

❌ Expired card

The customer’s credit or debit card has expired and can’t be charged.

❌ Insufficient funds

The card is valid, but there isn’t enough balance at the time of the charge.

❌ Card declined by bank

The issuing bank blocked the transaction for fraud prevention or policy reasons.

❌ Payment method no longer valid

The card was canceled or changed (e.g. customer switched banks).

❌ Incorrect or missing billing details

If the billing info no longer matches or is incomplete, charges may fail.

What happens after a failed payment?

Roadmap automatically starts a dunning process:

• The charge is retried several times (based on your settings)
• You can view the retry timeline in Roadmap Admin → Subscriptions → Manage Subscriptions
• If all retries fail, the subscription is marked Failed

👉 The customer won’t be charged again unless:

• The payment succeeds on retry
• They update their payment method
• You retry manually from the admin

How to resolve a failed payment

For customers:

1. Log in to their account
2. Go to Manage Subscriptions
3. Click Update Payment Method
4. Save the new card info

This will trigger a retry (or you can do it manually from the admin).

For merchants:

1. Go to the failed subscription in your admin
2. Click Retry Payment
3. Monitor status for success or failure

FAQs

Will the customer be notified of failed payments?

 Only if you’ve set up email flows (e.g. via Klaviyo or Shopify notifications).

Can I extend dunning or retry more times?

 Yes — adjust the Dunning Settings in Roadmap to customize retry attempts and timing.

Can I fix the issue from my end?

 You can retry the charge, but only the customer can update their payment details for security reasons.

Summary

A subscription payment fails when:

• ✅ The card is expired, invalid, or blocked
• ✅ There are insufficient funds
• ✅ Billing info is incorrect or outdated

Use Roadmap’s dunning system to retry, or guide the customer to update their payment method to recover the subscription.

Need help identifying why a specific payment failed? [Contact support →] and we’ll take a look.