Build proper dunning

Card retries, an updater for expired cards and a short email sequence. Stripe’s own billing page says it recovered $8.2B in failed payments in 2025; read any recovery figure as the vendor’s own.

Step 5.3.3

Time: 4h

Done when

Open the payment provider settings and give the retry schedule and the subject of each dunning email. Retries are on, and the sequence has at least three messages. (Proof: a list of the items.)

If this is a change to your product

What must become true: A failed payment triggers scheduled card retries and a short email sequence that links straight to the page where the card is updated, and the sequence stops when the payment succeeds.
Where it usually lives: The payment provider’s retry and email settings, plus a handler for failed and recovered payments.
The trap: Emails that keep arriving after the card is fixed. Stop the sequence on the recovery event, and test with a test card that fails and then succeeds.

Evidence

Evidence, weak

Stripe’s billing page says $8.2B in failed payments were recovered in 2025 and $14 recovered for every $1 spent on its tools, and lists Smart Retries, expired card updates, recovery and retention automations and cancellation surveys. It states no share of involuntary churn recovered. Two earlier readings of a 55% average recovery rate could not be found on the page.

A vendor’s own landing-page totals with no stated method, and a figure two readers reported was not on the page when it was checked directly.

Re-checked 2026-11-10 by Claude, reading the page directly: not confirmed. The page does not state a 55% recovery rate (the only 55% is a sample tax rate). It says $8.2B in failed payments were recovered in 2025 and $14 for every $1 spent. The claim was rewritten to that.

Changed in the plan: Plan text corrected 2026-11-10, twice: the first version had 30-50% of involuntary churn with no primary source; the second had a 55% that the page does not carry. It now quotes the totals the page does state.

Stripe Billing (read in full)

True as of 2026-11-10; to be re-checked by 2027-02-10.

Removed from this step

These statements were here until a source did not support them.

It said: Card retries plus four emails recover 30 to 50% of involuntary churn.
We found: No primary source. Stripe’s page gives totals ($8.2B recovered in 2025, $14 per $1 spent), not a share of involuntary churn; a 55% figure two readers reported was not on the page when checked directly.
Now: Stripe’s own totals, labelled as the vendor’s.

Do these first

Turn on failed-payment emails

In topics

Open in the launch plan