When a subscription payment fails, Loop automatically retries the charge and can notify the subscriber, giving them a chance to fix the issue before their subscription is paused or cancelled. Payment recovery runs in two modes:
Advanced recovery strategies, which build a dedicated retry and messaging journey for a specific failure reason, and General recovery, a single global setup that catches everything an Advanced strategy doesn't claim. Advanced recovery strategies are available on the Pro plan.
You don't have to choose one or the other. Every store starts with General recovery configured, and you can layer Advanced strategies on top for the failure reasons you want to treat differently. Anything not covered by an active Advanced strategy automatically falls back to General recovery.
Why this matters
Not every failed payment is the same problem, so it shouldn't get the same response:
Hard declines (expired card, lost/stolen card) will never succeed on retry. Retrying them wastes processor fees and can hurt your authorisation rate - these need an immediate, direct call-to-action instead.
Soft declines (insufficient funds, gateway/network errors) often resolve on their own within a day or two. Emailing the subscriber immediately can cause unnecessary alarm - these benefit from a quiet retry first.
Generic messaging treats an expired card the same as a temporarily low balance, when each deserves a different tone and urgency.
Advanced recovery strategies let you route each failure reason to the retry logic and messaging that actually fits it, while General recovery keeps things simple for everything else.
Advanced recovery strategies
Advanced recovery strategies let you build a dedicated recovery journey for a specific payment failure reason, complete with its own conditions, retry schedule, discounts, and emails. When a payment fails, Loop checks whether the failure reason matches any active Advanced strategy; if it does, that strategy's settings take over, and if it doesn't, General recovery applies.
Note: Advanced recovery strategies are available on the Pro plan. Every store starts with a few draft strategies already scaffolded as a starting point, and you can edit, activate, duplicate, or delete them as needed.
The strategy list
Go to Payment recovery > Advanced recovery to see every strategy you've created, along with:
Status - Draft, Active
Configuration - emails and retries
Payment failed - distinct order failed count
Recovered amount and recovery rate
From the row menu on any strategy you can set it active, edit, duplicate, or delete it. Click Create strategy to start a new one from scratch.
Building a strategy
Internal name: The first field is an internal name, visible only inside Loop admin. It's used to identify the strategy in the list view and activity logs - subscribers never see it.
Payment failure reason: Select one or more failure reasons this strategy should target. Refer to Analytics > Payments > Failures to check most common failures for your store. For more context, refer to Payment errors list
Failure reason | Type | Notes |
Insufficient funds | Soft | Often resolves within a few days. Benefits from a silent early retry. |
Card expired | Hard | Will never succeed on retry. Needs immediate subscriber action. |
Do not honor | Ambiguous | Catch-all bank decline. Run a couple of quick retries, then escalate. |
Lost / stolen card | Hard | Requires a new card. Best handled with minimum retries and an empathetic tone. |
Gateway / network error | Soft | Transient. Retry silently; email only if all retries fail. |
Card expiring soon | Proactive | Fires before failure - outreach starts ahead of the expiry date. |
Conditions (optional): Narrow who enters the strategy beyond just the failure reason, using conditions across:
Customer - tag, order count, total spend
Subscription - status, order count, spent, discount
Product - product count, specific product
Demography- country present, not present
A strategy with no conditions applies to every subscriber matching the failure reason. You could target expired-card failures only for customers with lifetime spend above a certain threshold, and offer them a stronger incentive.
Retry settings: These override General recovery for anyone matched by this strategy:
Total retry attempts - from 3 retries up to 25.
Delay schedule - a custom number of days before each retry (defaults to 1 day).
A discount title, set once and shared across every discounted step in this strategy.
Email settings: Choose your email strategy:
Same email for all retries except last - one template is used for every retry, with a separate template reserved for the final and pre-final retry.
Different email per retry - configure a unique email for every single retry step.
Switching between strategies on an already-saved setup can change which template is used where, so review your templates after switching.
Set notification timing for each retry: notify immediately on the attempt, or only within a selected retry range (useful if you want the first attempt or two to run silently).
Email editor
Each retry step (and the final "payment failed" email) opens into a full editor:
Subject line
CTA button text, button colour, and CTA destination (customer portal or payment drawer)
An HTML editor with a live preview panel
A variables reference strip for personalization (subscriber name, order details, retry date, etc.)
Send test - sends a preview of the email to your own account email
To save time, you can copy an email from one retry step to another retry step, or to all steps at once, instead of rebuilding it from scratch each time.
Discounts settings:
This is the biggest change in this release: discounts no longer require the subscriber to click a link and update their card to activate.
From each retry row, you can add an optional discount directly with an inline Add discount control:
Click Add discount on the retry step where you want the incentive to kick in.
Choose the discount type: percentage off or fixed amount off, and set the value.
Field | What it does |
Discount title | The display name for the discount, shown wherever the discount appears. Used across all retries in the strategy, so you only set it once. |
Discount text | The customer-facing copy describing the discount, for example "Save {recovery_discount_value} on your next payment." The |
Discount text key (Loop notifications) | The key used to reference the discount text in emails sent through Loop's own notification system. |
Discount text key (Klaviyo) | The key used to reference the discount text in emails sent through Klaviyo or other third-party apps, for example |
Payment failure emails and outcome after all retries
Here's how it behaves once it's live:
The discount applies automatically to the subscription the moment it reaches that retry attempt - the subscriber doesn't need to click anything in the email.
If an earlier retry step also had a discount, that discount is removed as soon as the subscription lands on the next retry step with a discount configured. Only the discount tied to the subscriber's current retry step is ever active on the subscription.
If a retry step has no discount configured, its row simply shows "None configured." A retry step with a discount shows a badge with the value, so you can see your full discount escalation (e.g., 5% → 10% → 15% the further a subscriber gets into the retry sequence) at a glance.
This means discounts now act as an escalating incentive tied to how far along a subscriber is in the retry cycle, rather than a reward for a specific click
Outcome after all retries: the final action, pause/cancel subscription if order doesn't get processed successfully.
Note: Change status any time from the strategy form. Editing settings on an Active strategy does not change how subscribers already mid-cycle under the previous settings behave - new settings apply to subscribers entering the strategy going forward.
If a failed payment's reason isn't covered by any Active strategy, it automatically falls back to General recovery - you don't need to build a strategy for every failure reason, only the ones you want to treat differently.
General recovery
General recovery is the default, low-configuration setup that applies to any failed payment not claimed by an active Advanced strategy. It's available on every plan, so it's the setup you have even before you touch Advanced strategies.
Navigate to Loop admin > Retain > Payment recovery > General recovery to configure it.
General recovery uses the same building blocks as an Advanced strategy, just without failure-reason targeting or conditions, since it's a single journey that applies to everyone:
Retry, delay, and email settings: set a total retry count from 3 to 25 attempts, choose the same delay schedule and email strategy options described above, and set notification timing for each retry so you can keep early attempts silent if you want.
Discounts: work exactly as in an Advanced strategy: automatic, no click required, escalating as a subscriber moves further through the retry cycle, with the same discount title, discount text, and discount text key fields.
Outcome after all retries: the same final action, pause/cancel subscription
Email analytics and alerts
From the Analytics tab on the every recovery strategy, you get visibility into how your recovery emails are performing across both General and Advanced recovery.
Top-level metrics for the selected period:
Total emails sent
Delivery rate
Open rate
Click rate
Card update rate (conversion)
Per-step breakdown - a table with one row per retry step, per strategy (or General), showing emails sent, emails delivered, open rate, click rate, card update rate, rates based on delivered mails. This makes it easy to spot under-performing mails.
FAQs
Do I have to set up Advanced strategies for this to work?
No, every store runs on General recovery by default, and Advanced strategies are optional, available on the Pro plan, and only needed for the failure reasons you want to handle differently.
Does the discount still require the subscriber to click a link and update their card? No, discounts now apply automatically to the subscription as soon as it reaches the retry step you configured a discount on, with no click or card update required.
What happens to a discount from an earlier retry if the subscriber does not act?
It gets replaced provided you don't change the discount title in the strategy. Only the discount tied to the subscriber's current retry step stays active, and once they move to the next retry step, that step's discount, if any, takes over.
Can the same failure reason be handled by two different strategies?
No, a failure reason will find the highest order active strategy where it matches, so only one strategy at a time works.
What happens if I edit an active strategy?
Subscribers already mid-cycle continue under the settings that were active when they entered the strategy, and your changes apply only to subscribers who enter the strategy after the edit.
What happens to subscribers already in recovery if I switch a strategy to Draft? They will fallback to any other advanced strategy if matches or else default to general strategy except when the pre-final attempt fails. In case pre-final attempt fails we do not fallback subscription to general since customer got communicated that only his last retry remains.
Can I turn off notifications for a specific retry but still attempt the charge?
Yes, turning off notification for a retry step still attempts the charge; it just does not send an email for that attempt.
What if a subscriber updates their card before their next scheduled retry?
Any remaining retries and emails for that billing cycle stop, since Loop does not keep retrying or emailing once the payment succeeds.
Need help?
No worries - we're here for you! If you have any questions or need assistance, feel free to email us at [email protected] or chat with us using the support beacon at the bottom right of your screen.
Regards, Loop subscriptions team 🙂