RecoverGuide
The free Stripe settings to switch on before you pay anyone
Last updated 16 August 2026 · written by Bruce McGinley, who builds RecoverFlow
Stripe Billing already includes retry scheduling and a set of customer emails, at no extra charge. A surprising number of accounts have some of it switched off.
This is the list, with the exact Dashboard path for each setting so you can work through it in one sitting.
It ends with the part no vendor writes down: how to tell when this is genuinely all you need.
On this page
- 1. Turn on and tune Smart Retries
- 2. Turn on the emails Stripe will send for you
- 3. Make them look like you, and give them somewhere to go
- 4. Decide what happens when the retries run out
- 5. If you take direct debit, this one is off by default
- 6. When to stop here and buy nothing
- Questions people actually ask
1. Turn on and tune Smart Retries
Go to Billing > Revenue recovery > Retries. For one-time invoice retries, the setting is under Advanced invoicing features in Settings > Billing > Invoices.
Smart Retries picks retry times with a model rather than a fixed ladder. You choose the number of retries and the maximum duration, from 1 week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 1 month or 2 months. Stripe's recommended default is 8 tries within 2 weeks.
Leave it at the default unless your own decline mix argues otherwise. Longer windows help when your failures are insufficient_funds, because what you are waiting for is payday. They do not help when the card needs replacing, they only delay the moment you find out. There is a longer piece on choosing the window.
You can also disable Smart Retries and define your own rules, up to three retries each set a number of days after the previous attempt. Do that only if you have a specific reason, not because a fixed schedule feels more controlled.
2. Turn on the emails Stripe will send for you
Most of these live under Email notifications and customer management in your subscriptions and emails settings, and the two revenue recovery ones live on the revenue recovery emails page.
| Setting, exactly as Stripe labels it | Where | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Send emails when card payments fail | Revenue recovery settings | Emails the customer after each failed payment, with a link to update the payment method |
| Send emails about expiring cards | Revenue recovery settings | Sends 1 month before a card on file expires, where it is the default payment method or default source |
| Send reminders if a recurring invoice hasn't been paid | Billing settings, under Manage invoices sent to customers | Reminders for recurring invoices whose collection method is send_invoice |
| Send a Stripe-hosted link for customers to confirm their payments when required | Email notifications and customer management | Covers payments that need customer action, such as 3D Secure |
| Send reminders if payment confirmation isn't completed | Email notifications and customer management | Keeps reminding until the customer confirms or the payment expires |
| Send emails about upcoming renewals | Email notifications and customer management | Timing comes from Prevent failed payments > Upcoming renewal events |
| Send a reminder email 7 days before a free trial ends | Email notifications and customer management | Gives trialists a chance to add a working card before the first charge |
The first two are the ones that recover money. The rest prevent failures rather than chase them, which is cheaper and less annoying for everybody.
3. Make them look like you, and give them somewhere to go
All of these emails and hosted pages use your branding settings, so fill those in. An unbranded email asking for card details is indistinguishable from a phishing attempt, and your customers are right to treat it that way.
Payment confirmation, failed payment, trial ending, renewal and expiring card emails all include a link where the customer can update their payment method. You choose the destination: a Stripe-hosted page, or your own subscription management page. If you pick Link to a Stripe-hosted page, Stripe generates a secure private URL where the customer can update the payment method and pay any outstanding invoices.
Know the expiry rules on that link. It stops working once 30 days have passed since a trial ending email, once the subscription becomes cancelled, incomplete_expired or unpaid, once the trial has ended and a payment method was already provided, or once the renewal period has expired. A dunning sequence that runs longer than the link it points at will send people to a dead page.
Two more things worth knowing while you are in here. Email logs on the Customers page cover the last 60 days only, they update daily, and they exclude the current date. And in a sandbox Stripe does not automatically send customer emails, so to test you need an address on your verified email domain or an active team member's address.
4. Decide what happens when the retries run out
This is a setting, not a default you have to accept, and most people have never looked at it. When recovery fails, the subscription transitions one of three ways.
- Cancel the subscription. It changes to
canceledafter the maximum number of days in your retry schedule. - Mark the subscription as unpaid. It changes to
unpaid, and invoices continue to be generated and stay in a draft state. - Leave the subscription past-due. It stays
past_due, invoices continue to be generated, and the customer keeps being charged based on your retry settings.
Pick deliberately, because the choice decides whether a customer who comes back in three weeks still has an account. What each status means goes through the trade-offs.
5. If you take direct debit, this one is off by default
Stripe does not automatically retry failed payments made with local payment methods unless you turn it on, in the Local payment methods section for recurring subscription invoices, one-off invoices, or both.
| Method | Retryable failure | Maximum retries | Maximum period |
|---|---|---|---|
| ACH Direct Debit | Insufficient funds | 2 | 40 days |
| ACSS Direct Debit | Insufficient funds | 1 | 30 days |
| Australia BECS Direct Debit | Insufficient funds | 2 | 30 days |
| Bacs Direct Debit | Insufficient funds | 2 | 30 days |
| New Zealand BECS Direct Debit | Insufficient funds | 1 | 30 days |
| SEPA Direct Debit | Insufficient funds | 2 | 30 days |
Each has its own mandate requirements, and Stripe notes that enabling this does not make it responsible for losses if a local payment method retry does not happen.
6. When to stop here and buy nothing
Work through the list above and then look at your actual decline codes. In the Dashboard, filter Payments to failed, or filter Invoices to unpaid and open the latest attempt on each. Twenty is enough to see the shape.
Sort them into two piles. One pile is failures where the money exists and the timing was wrong: insufficient_funds above all, plus processing_error and try_again_later. The other pile is cards that are gone: lost, stolen, revoked, blocked, or expired with no updated card pushed through the network.
If the first pile is most of your volume, the honest conclusion follows: retry timing is your lever, Stripe's model is better at retry timing than a rule you would write, the emails above already ask the few customers who need to act, and it is all free.
Said plainly, because it is the point of this page: if you have those settings switched on and your failures are mostly insufficient_funds, Stripe has you covered. Do not buy a payment recovery tool. That includes RecoverFlow. Come back if your decline mix changes or if you need attribution, sequence control or history that outlives Stripe's 60 day email log, and until then keep the money.
Questions people actually ask
Does Stripe charge extra for Smart Retries or dunning emails?
No. Both are part of Stripe Billing rather than separate paid products. Anyone selling you payment recovery should be adding something on top of them, not selling you what your account already does.
Where is the setting for failed payment emails?
Enable Send emails when card payments fail on the revenue recovery settings page, under Billing then Revenue recovery. The expiring card email, Send emails about expiring cards, lives in the same place and sends 1 month before a card on file expires.
How long does Stripe keep a record of the emails it sent?
Logs for emails sent in the last 60 days are on the Customers page in the Dashboard. They are updated daily and do not include emails from the current date. If you need a longer history than that, you need to keep it yourself.
Will Stripe email my customers while I am testing?
In a sandbox Stripe does not automatically send customer emails. To test the configuration, use an address belonging to your verified email domain or to an active team member. Stripe then sends failed payment notifications, upcoming invoice reminders, trial ending reminders and card expiring reminders in the sandbox.
Should I change the retry window from 2 weeks?
Only if your decline mix says so. A longer window helps when failures are insufficient_funds, because the thing you are waiting for is payday, and two weeks catches one pay cycle while a month catches two. It does not help when the card itself needs replacing, and stretching to two months mainly stretches your reporting lag.
Where this came from
Checked against primary sources on 4 August 2026. If Stripe changes something and this page has not caught up, tell us and it gets fixed.
- Stripe: Customer emails
- Stripe: Smart Retries — the source for the 8 tries in 2 weeks default, the configurable window, and the nine code list.
- Stripe: Subscription lifecycle and statuses — the source for every status definition quoted on this page.
If you would rather not build this yourself
RecoverFlow watches your Stripe account for failed subscription payments, stops retrying the ones that cannot succeed, and emails the customers whose card simply needs replacing. It charges 25% of what it can attribute to a specific action it took, with a $29 monthly floor and a $299 monthly ceiling, and the floor is waived for the first 30 days.
Before any of that, you can find out whether it is worth doing at all. Answer three questions in a reply and I will send back what your failed payments are probably costing you, how much of it is genuinely recoverable, and whether Stripe's own free features already handle it. No Stripe connection, no account, no card.
It is early. It is run by one person. If Stripe's own free retry settings are enough for you, use those instead, and the pricing page says exactly when that is the right call.
Get the free audit