Prerequisites

• An active Recurly account with one or more of the following payment methods enabled: SEPA Direct Debit, BACS, BECS, or ACH. Gateway support by method:
  • SEPA: Adyen, Stripe, GoCardless, Worldpay
  • BACS: Adyen, Stripe, GoCardless
  • ACH: Adyen, Stripe, GoCardless
  • BECS: Stripe, GoCardless
• Integration with Adyen, Stripe (via Stripe Payment Elements), GoCardless, or Worldpay.

Limitations

• Only retries transactions declined for insufficient funds — other failure reasons are not retried.
• Gateway-level retry services must be disabled to avoid double-charging customers. This includes Adyen's Auto Rescue and GoCardless Success+.
• Supported Direct Debit payments can only be retried twice, per NACHA, SEPA, and EU/AU regulations.
• Retry timing is fixed at 24 hours after a late failure notification — customization is not available.
• Retries do not occur if your dunning settings are configured to immediately expire subscriptions on failed payments.
• Check Commerce is not supported.
• ACH support is limited on Worldpay — the gateway does not return proper RX ACH Return codes.

Definition

Key benefits

Key details

Retry behavior

• Recurly schedules a retry automatically 24 hours after a late failure notification for insufficient funds.
• Up to two retries are allowed per invoice after the initial failure, per regulatory limits.
• Invoices are marked Processing or Paid as payments progress, and Past Due if payment fails due to insufficient funds.
• Updating billing info to a new bank account resets the retry counter. If the customer switches to a different payment method after a failure, queued retries are canceled.

Billing info updates

Updating billing information with a new bank account number resets the retry counter and process. If a customer switches to a different payment method after a failed bank payment, any scheduled retries are canceled and the new payment method is used for future transactions.

Setup

Enable Direct Debit retries

Navigate to Configuration → Payment Settings in Recurly. Check the appropriate checkbox for each gateway and payment method combination you want to enable retries for. The feature is off by default to avoid conflicts with any existing retry mechanisms.

Invoice details with retries enabled

When Direct Debit retries are active, each invoice shows additional retry information:

• Next attempt — When the next retry will occur, if retries remain.
• Remaining attempts — Count of retries left (from 2 down to 0).

These fields are not visible before a payment fails. After a failure, the next scheduled attempt (24 hours post-failure) becomes visible, along with the Attempt Collection option for manual retry.

Manual retry

Using Attempt Collection manually cancels any queued automatic retry. If this is the final allowed attempt, no further automated retries will be scheduled. After all attempts are exhausted, the invoice shows Retry schedule completed — no further attempts will be made against that bank account.

Behavior when retries are disabled

When Direct Debit retries are turned off:

• Remaining attempts — Not shown in the Collection Info section. Merchants can still manually trigger Attempt Collection but should not exceed the mandated 2 retries.
• Next attempt — Shows "Retry schedule completed," indicating Recurly will not automatically retry. Original behavior is preserved — no automatic retries without explicit activation.

FAQs