Recurring billing that your customers can manage themselves.
Renewals are charged to the card saved at checkout, on a schedule the customer agreed to in writing. Skips, pauses, cancellations and card updates happen in a portal under your name, so they do not become support tickets.
How a subscription starts
A subscription begins at checkout, not afterwards. When a product is set to renew, the checkout page shows the renewal price, the billing period, the date the first renewal will be charged and a plain sentence on how to cancel, on the same screen where the card number is typed. The customer ticks a box to agree. We never tick it for them, and the order cannot be placed until they do.
The card is tokenized by the hosted fields at that moment and the token is what we keep. Your store receives the first order the way it receives any order. Within a few minutes the customer gets an enrollment email from your store that repeats the terms, states the next renewal date and includes the link to their portal. That email is the record we point to if anyone later asks what the customer was told.
If a product has a free trial, the trial length is set when you create the product. For trials longer than seven days we email the customer between three and seven days before the first charge, with the amount and the cancellation link. You do not have to remember to send it.
Billing periods and what a renewal looks like
Each renewal is a real order in your store, with its own number and receipt.
Subscriptions can renew weekly, every two weeks, every four weeks, monthly or yearly. The period is set per product and a customer can change it from the portal if you allow that; the change applies from the next renewal and is confirmed by email. Renewals are charged early in the morning in your store's time zone so that a failed charge is visible to you during working hours.
When a renewal succeeds, we create a new order in your store rather than appending a line to the old one. Your fulfilment, your inventory counts and your accounting see a normal paid order with the customer's current shipping address. The receipt the customer receives shows your statement descriptor, the same one printed at the original checkout, so the charge is recognized on their statement.
In the dashboard you can look at the same activity from the subscription's side: when it started, every renewal and whether it succeeded, the retries, and anything the customer did in the portal. Payout statements list renewals next to one-time orders, and the monthly statement totals them separately so you can see what recurring revenue actually settled.
Retry schedule
Failed renewals are retried on fixed days. Nothing is retried more often than this, and nothing is retried in silence.
| Renewal date | The saved card is charged for the period. If it succeeds, a new order is created in your store and the customer receives the normal order confirmation. |
|---|---|
| Day 3 | First retry. Most soft declines, such as a temporary hold or an issuer timeout, clear by now. The customer is emailed the same day with a link to update the card. |
| Day 7 | Second retry. If the card has been replaced since the first attempt, the retry uses the new card. A second email goes out only if this attempt also fails. |
| Day 14 | Third and final retry. If it fails, the subscription is marked past due and stops attempting. Nothing is charged after this point until the customer updates the card. |
The schedule is deliberately slow. Three attempts over two weeks, each followed by an email the customer can act on, recovers most renewals that are going to be recovered, and the customer is never surprised by a charge they did not expect.
What the customer can do without contacting you
The portal lives on your domain and carries your name. We do not put our brand in front of your customers.
- Skip a cycle
- The next renewal is moved forward one period. The one after that is unchanged. There is no limit on how often a customer can skip, though you can set one.
- Pause
- Renewals stop until the customer resumes. We do not charge anything during a pause, and the customer gets a reminder before the first renewal after resuming.
- Cancel
- The subscription ends at the close of the current paid period. The customer keeps what they paid for and is not charged again. A cancellation email is sent within seven days.
- Update the card
- A link opens hosted card fields on your domain. The new card is tokenized the same way as at checkout and replaces the old token. Your systems never see the number.
- Change the schedule
- Weekly, every two weeks, every four weeks, monthly or yearly. A change takes effect from the next renewal and is confirmed by email.
Every portal action is confirmed to the customer by email and written to the subscription's history, where you can see it. A customer who cancels is not charged again. We do not run win-back offers or make cancellation harder than signing up; a subscription that is difficult to leave produces disputes, and a dispute costs more than the renewal.
Disputes on recurring charges
Most disputes on a renewal come from a customer who forgot they subscribed or did not recognize the charge. The enrollment screen, the ticked box, the enrollment email and the statement descriptor exist to prevent that, and when it still happens they are the evidence. We keep all of it with the subscription, timestamped.
When a dispute arrives on any renewal, the subscription is paused immediately so there is no further charge while the dispute is open. We assemble the response from the record and file it before the deadline; you can read it in the dashboard before it goes. If the dispute is won, the subscription stays paused until you decide to resume it. If it is lost, it stays paused and the customer is treated as having cancelled.
Card-network alerts work on renewals the same way they do on one-time orders: where an alert arrives before the dispute is formally raised, the renewal can be refunded automatically within a limit you set, and the subscription is paused at the same time.
Questions about subscriptions
Do I need a subscription plugin on my store as well?
For WooCommerce and Shopify, our plugin handles the subscription product, the sign-up checkbox and the customer portal link, so you do not need a second subscription app. For a custom store, the API creates the subscription when the first order is paid and your store receives a webhook for every renewal. In both cases the billing itself, the retries and the card updates run on our side, against the vaulted card.
What does the customer agree to, and where?
The renewal price, the period, the date of the first renewal and how to cancel are printed on the same screen where the card is entered, and again in the order summary. The customer ticks a box that is never ticked for them. After paying they receive an enrollment email that repeats the terms and includes the cancellation link. This is what the card networks require, and it is also what wins a dispute later if a customer says they did not know they had subscribed.
What happens when a renewal is disputed?
The subscription is paused the moment the dispute arrives, so there is no further charge while it is open. We assemble the response from the enrollment record: the terms the customer saw, the time they ticked the box, the enrollment email, every renewal receipt and any portal activity such as skips or a card update. You see the dispute and its status in the dashboard. If the dispute is lost, the subscription stays paused and you decide whether to cancel it.
Can I offer a free trial?
Yes. The trial length is set per product. If the trial is longer than seven days, the customer is emailed a reminder between three and seven days before the first charge, with the amount and the cancellation link. That reminder is not optional; it is part of how trials have to be run to stay inside the network rules, and we send it for you.
Where do renewals show up in my reporting?
Every renewal is created as its own order in your store, with its own order number and receipt, so your fulfilment, inventory and accounting see it the way they see any other order. In the dashboard you can also view a subscription as a whole: its start date, every renewal and its outcome, the retries, and the customer's portal activity. Payout statements list renewals alongside one-time orders.
What if a customer's bank issues a new card?
In many cases the networks pass the new card details through to the vault automatically and the next renewal simply uses the replacement card. Where that does not happen, the first failed retry triggers the update-card email, and the link in it opens hosted card fields on your domain. Once the customer saves the new card, the schedule continues from where it was.
Selling on subscription already?
Tell us how your renewals run today, including the plugin or app you use, and we will explain what moving them to Trustfac involves and what stays the same for your customers.