Every renewal is charged through the same provider the customer used when they subscribed, with the payment method saved at checkout. Nobody has to be present: renewals are merchant-initiated charges on a saved payment method. Which providers you can connect is on Card payment providers.

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Declined payment vs. a provider outage

A renewal can fail for two very different reasons, and they are handled differently. The customer’s payment was declined — insufficient funds, an expired card, a PayPal funding source refused. This goes through your dunning settings: retries on a schedule chosen for the decline reason, emails to the customer, and Past due if it still doesn’t go through. See Failed subscription payments. The payment provider couldn’t be reached, or answered with an error on its side — a timeout, a provider outage, a rate limit, a disconnected or revoked account key. The customer’s payment method was never asked, so it is not the customer’s fault and none of the dunning steps happen:
  • no failed attempt is counted and no retry rung is used up,
  • the customer is not emailed,
  • the subscription does not go Past due and is never cancelled for it.
The renewal is deferred instead and tried again automatically. The first retry comes on the next billing run; if the problem keeps happening the wait doubles each time, from 30 minutes up to at most 12 hours, until the charge goes through. Each deferral is recorded in the subscription’s history as charge deferred — platform error, with the provider’s message, so you can see — and fix — a disconnected account.

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Stripe (PlatformDTC Payments or your own Stripe account)

The card saved at checkout is charged off-session. If the customer’s bank asks for authentication (3D Secure) on a renewal, the renewal is treated as a decline that isn’t retried, and the customer is asked to update their payment method — see Failed subscription payments. Customers change their card in the customer portal; the next renewal uses the new card.

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PayPal

When a customer subscribes with PayPal, PayPal saves their account (a vault) and renewals charge it. Subscriptions you import from a legacy PayPal account are charged through their existing billing agreement instead.

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Customers changing PayPal in the portal

When a customer re-connects PayPal in the customer portal, the new PayPal account replaces the old payment method, including an imported billing agreement. From then on renewals charge the new PayPal account only; the old billing agreement is never charged again for that subscription. This matters for imported subscribers whose old agreement PayPal has already cancelled: re-connecting PayPal in the portal is how they fix it.

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Importing PayPal billing agreements

If your subscribers pay through billing agreements on a legacy PayPal account, move them in at Subscriptions → Import:
1

Add the PayPal account's credentials

A billing agreement can only be charged by the PayPal account that owns it. Enter that account’s REST app Client ID and Client secret (and, optionally, its PayPal merchant ID). The secret is stored encrypted. Without them, subscriptions still import but can’t be renewed.
2

Upload the export

Upload the PayPal billing-agreements export (JSON). Each subscriber is billed monthly at the amount of their own most recent transaction.
3

Choose the options and preview

  • Dormant subscribers — agreements with no charge in the active window are imported paused (recommended) or active. Pausing avoids charging long-churned accounts, which would fail and go through dunning.
  • Active window (days) — a subscriber charged within this many days counts as recently active.
  • Stagger (days) — overdue first charges are spread over this many days.
  • Product label — the product name shown on each subscription and its renewal orders.
  • Min amount — agreements below this amount are skipped.
Preview shows how many will import, how many will bill, how many are paused, how many were already imported and the estimated monthly revenue. Then start the import.
Running the import again never duplicates a subscriber who was already imported. Moving from Recharge or Skio instead? Use Move from Shopify.

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Authorize.Net

At checkout, Authorize.Net creates a customer profile from the approved first payment, marked as the first payment of a recurring series. Renewals charge that profile as recurring card-on-file payments. Your customers’ cards stay in your Authorize.Net account. Renewal orders can be refunded from the order page like checkout orders — see Authorize.Net refunds.

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When a customer updates their card

The customer portal saves a new card with Stripe. When a customer on an Authorize.Net subscription updates their card, the subscription moves to that Stripe card and renews through Stripe from then on.