How it works
How LastRetry recovers failed Stripe payments
It reads why each payment failed, plans retries and reminders around that reason, and gives your customer one obvious way to fix it.
- Step 1
Connect Stripe
One click through Stripe. Failed invoices from the last 30 days are imported, so you see what's at risk right away.
- Step 2
Each failure gets its own plan
Retries, emails and alerts are scheduled from the decline reason, not a fixed calendar.
- Step 3
Customers fix it in one click
From an email, a text or a banner in your app to a Stripe-hosted card page. The new card is charged immediately.
A different plan for every kind of failure
Retrying a card that can't work wastes attempts and can count against you with card networks. Every reason has its own page in our decline code library.
How to recover failed payments
Recovering a failed subscription payment comes down to four things, in this order:
- Read the decline reason. Stripe returns a decline code with every failed charge. It tells you whether the card can still work (not enough money today, a temporary issuer problem) or can't (expired, replaced, lost).
- Retry only when a retry can work, and at the right moment. Insufficient funds often clear after payday; a temporary decline clears in hours or days. An expired card never will, so retrying it only burns attempts.
- Ask the customer when they have to act. A new card or a bank confirmation needs the customer. Send a short email in your name with one button, and follow up a few times before the subscription ends.
- Make fixing it take a minute. A card page that works on a phone, charges the invoice straight away and sends the customer back to your app.
LastRetry does all four automatically once Stripe is connected. If you use Stripe Billing's own retries today, read how Stripe Smart Retries compares before switching.
What is payment recovery?
Payment recovery means collecting a recurring payment that failed, without losing the customer. Most failed renewals are involuntary: the customer still wants the product, but the card expired, the account was short for a few days or the bank asked for an extra check. Recovering them is cheaper than winning a new customer, because the customer never meant to leave.
What is involuntary churn?
Involuntary churn is customers lost because a payment failed, not because they chose to cancel. An expired card, a short balance or a bank's extra check ends the subscription unless someone follows up. It's the part of churn a cancellation survey or a retention offer can't fix, and the part failed payment recovery is built for.
What is a dunning strategy?
A dunning strategy is the plan for what happens after a payment fails: when to retry, which emails or texts go out, how long the customer keeps access, and when the subscription is cancelled. A good one depends on the decline reason rather than a fixed calendar, is written in your voice, and stops the moment the invoice is paid.
What does dunning mean in billing?
In subscription billing, dunning is the process of contacting customers about a payment that failed and getting it paid: retries, reminder emails and card update requests. It comes from the older word for demanding payment of a debt, but for SaaS it's usually about a card problem, not a customer who won't pay.
After a payment is recovered
Every case keeps a timeline: the failure, each retry and email, and how it was paid. Payments that happen outside LastRetry are marked external and never billed. See pricing for how the fee works.
See what failed payments are costing you.
Connect Stripe and your past-due invoices from the last 30 days show up in a minute. Free until something is recovered.