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When a payment fails

What happens when a card charge is declined, how long we keep retrying, and what to do to restore the subscription.

A declined renewal does not switch your bot off. The subscription moves into a payment-retry state, we tell you about it by email and in the dashboard, and you have roughly two weeks to sort the card out before the account is affected.

What you see

  • An email describing which payment failed and how much is due.
  • A banner at the top of the dashboard, visible to Administrators and Managers, with a link straight to Settings, Usage and billing.
  • The subscription card in Settings, Usage and billing marked as awaiting payment.

Your team can keep replying to customers throughout, and the bot keeps answering as long as the current period still has credits. We do not restrict the account while the card is still being retried.

How the retries work

Our payment provider retries the charge automatically, up to eight times over about two weeks, choosing the times that historically give the best chance of success. You do not have to trigger anything.

If you replace or update the card during that window, we do not wait for the next scheduled retry: the outstanding amount is charged immediately, and a successful charge clears the banner and the payment-retry state.

What to do

  1. Open Settings, Usage and billing.
  2. Add a new card, or set a different card you already have on file as the default (see Starting a subscription).
  3. Wait for confirmation. If the new charge needs bank authentication, complete it on screen.

If the charge still fails, the reason usually sits with the bank rather than with us. The most common ones are an expired card, insufficient funds, a limit on online or recurring payments, and a bank blocking foreign-registered merchants. Your bank's app or hotline will tell you which of those applies.

When the bank asks for authentication

Some cards require you to confirm each charge, including automatic ones. When that happens, the charge does not fail outright; it waits. We email you a link that takes you into the dashboard, where you complete the bank's confirmation. The payment is then taken straight away.

If none of the retries succeed

After the last attempt, the subscription is cancelled. No new billing period is created, the credit allowance is not renewed, and the account follows the standard procedure for accounts without active billing: warnings by email first, then restricted access to the dashboard.

The account is not deleted at that point, and your conversations, knowledge base and settings are all still there. Subscribing again restores access: Starting a subscription.

Preventing it

The most common cause is a card that expires without anyone noticing. We send reminders 30 days and 7 days before the expiry date of your default card, and again once it has expired. Treat the first of those as the moment to add the replacement, rather than the last.

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