Account Updater
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Account Updater
Protect your recurring revenue by automatically keeping card details up to date — before payments ever fail.
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Account Updater
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What is it?
A proactive tool that resolves card lifecycle events before they trigger a decline — reducing involuntary churn and eliminating gateway fees on invalid accounts.
Cards change. Charges fail.
When a customer's card expires, gets lost or stolen, or is reissued by their bank, the card number or expiration date changes. If you're charging that card on a recurring basis, that charge will simply fail — even though the customer never cancelled.
Account Updater handles it automatically.
Visa, Mastercard, AMEX, and Discover push updated card details directly to Recurly. Recurly stores the fresh information so your next billing attempt uses the correct data — no action needed from your customer.
Three ways it's delivered
Standard Account Updater
Supported for Visa, Mastercard, AMEX, and Discover. Updates are fetched via secure batch files before renewal attempts.
Real-Time Account Updater (RTAU)
Supported for Visa, Mastercard, and AMEX globally, with Discover available via specific gateways.
Cardrefresher
AMEX's specialized AU service. Provides a robust fallback for legacy integrations while many updates now happen via RTAU.
How it works
A cardholder's bank issues a card change
This could be a new card number or updated expiration date. Common events: annual renewals, fraud replacements, or bank migrations.
The card network is notified
Visa, Mastercard, American Express (AMEX), or Discover updates their internal records with the new card details.
Recurly is alerted
For standard AU, Recurly checks for updates on a scheduled basis. For RTAU, Recurly requests the update at the exact moment a transaction is attempted.
Recurly updates the stored payment method
For all participating banks and eligible card types, new card details replace the old ones in the vault — silently, automatically, and without action required from your customer.
The next renewal charges successfully
Because the billing info is already up to date, the subscription renews without interruption. No failed payment. No dunning. No involuntary churn.
Account Updater works with cards stored in Recurly's vault. Apple Pay and Google Pay handle card lifecycle updates natively within their own ecosystem.
Account Updater fixes outdated card details behind the scenes. It's one of the few revenue recovery tools that is entirely proactive rather than reactive.
Updated 9 days ago