Automatic payments and what happens when a charge fails

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With automatic payments, your client saves a card or bank account in their portal and each invoice is charged on its due date. Your client turns it on, with their authorization; your business decides whether to offer it and can turn it off at any time.

In short:

• Offer it: turn on Allow automatic payments under Settings › Payments › Payment methods (it’s on by default and the change saves right away). You need an active Cord Payments account.
• Turn it on: your client clicks Turn on automatic payments in their portal and accepts the authorization, or ticks Save this method for automatic payments when paying.
• What is charged: each open invoice due today or earlier, issued after your client authorized it and at least one day before. All invoices in the same currency go in a single charge.
• When: once a day. Each invoice email tells your client the date and method of the charge.
• If it fails: Cord only retries when it makes sense, depending on the decline reason, up to 4 attempts by card and 3 by bank debit. Your client gets an email with the link to turn it off and you get a task when the charge stops.
• Turn it off: per client from their profile (Turn off automatic payments) or for everyone with the Allow automatic payments switch under Settings › Payments › Payment methods. Your client turns it off from their portal or with the Turn off automatic payments link in their emails, and disabling their portal link turns it off too.

How your client authorizes it

In their portal, the Automatic payments section reads “Save a method and each invoice is paid on its due date, without you having to come back”. When they click Turn on automatic payments, your client accepts: “I authorize your business to charge this method, on its due date, each invoice it issues to me from today on. I can turn this off at any time from this portal”. Then they save their method with Save method.

• Cord records the authorization with the exact text your client accepted, the date, IP and browser, and activates it only once the bank confirms that method.
• Turning it on needs an email address: the one on their profile or, if there isn’t one, one your client types in the portal. Without an email it doesn’t turn on.
• Once it’s active, your client gets an email at that address with your branding confirming it: the method, the date they authorized it, that each invoice will be charged on its due date, and the Turn off automatic payments link, which turns it off without opening the portal.
• If they change methods, the previous authorization isn’t deleted: it stays in the history as replaced. Each authorization is kept while it’s active and for 540 days after it ends.
• With a bank account, the portal reads “We’re verifying your bank account” until it is confirmed.
• A bank debit method only covers its currency: SEPA covers EUR, ACH covers USD and Bacs covers GBP. An invoice in another currency is not charged with it.
• A Bacs Direct Debit account is not saved with Turn on automatic payments: your client saves it when paying an invoice in their portal by ticking Save this method for automatic payments.
• Canadian pre-authorized debit is not used for automatic payments: your client authorizes each debit for its amount, so they save their account when paying and pay each invoice with one click from their portal. With a card they can turn automatic payments on.
• With ACH bank debit (United States), only a business account goes into automatic payments. With a personal account, debiting amounts that change from one invoice to the next requires notice of each debit’s amount and date ten days in advance, so your client pays each invoice with one click from their portal, as in Canada. The bank reports the account type when the account is confirmed: if it says the account is personal, or doesn’t say, automatic payments don’t turn on and the portal tells your client why. With a card they can turn them on.
• Your client can Change method or Turn off whenever they want; their invoices stay in the portal to pay manually.

What is charged and when

An invoice is included in the day’s charge if, at the same time:

• it is issued and open, with a balance, without a bank debit processing or a cancellation in progress, and it is not a test document;
• it is due today or earlier (with no due date, issued today or earlier) and was issued at least one day before, so your client receives it before the charge;
• it was issued after your client authorized automatic payments: what you had already invoiced them before they pay from the portal, even if it’s due later;
• the method covers its currency and your business still accepts that method.

All invoices in the same currency go in a single charge: one movement on your client’s statement. Each invoice receives its share as its own payment in its history. A SEPA debit is scheduled to be collected four days after it’s created.

Retry policy

Cord does not retry blindly: it decides by the decline reason. A decline counts once even if the notice arrives twice.

Caps:

• Card: at most 4 attempts (the first and three retries). Then it stops.
• Bank debit (SEPA, ACH or Bacs): only retried for insufficient funds, at most 2 times, on the next 1st or 16th within a week (at least 3 days later; otherwise after 4 days), and always within 30 days (SEPA and Bacs) or 40 days (ACH) of the first attempt. Any other debit decline is resolved by your client with their bank.

What you and your client see

• Your client gets an email with the Open my portal button (if their link is active) and the Turn off automatic payments link: “We couldn’t charge … We’ll try again on …”, or that their method can no longer be used, that their bank asks to confirm the payment, or that the charge failed after several attempts. Their portal says the same above their invoices.
• You see the status on the client’s profile, under Client portal › Automatic payments: “Attempt N declined in USD. Next attempt: …”, “Stopped in EUR: …” or “Turned off automatically: …”. When the charge stops, Cord creates a task for you (“Automatic payments stopped: …”).

If the bank did not respond

If the charge was sent and there was no response, Cord does not open another one: the next run retries the same operation, so there is no double charge. If there is no trace of the charge within 20 hours, it is cancelled. Cord also reconciles every day the charges that got no notice and debits that have been processing for more than 3 days.

Requirements and limits

• An active Cord Payments account under Settings › Payments › Account. In Colombia, Argentina, Chile and Peru, where online payment is through Mercado Pago, automatic payments are not available: Mercado Pago charges when your client opens the link.
• In Mexican pesos, automatic payments use a card.
• Bank transfer (SPEI or with a reference) is not used for automatic payments: your client pays it from each invoice’s link.
• Your business cannot turn it on for your client: it can only offer it or turn it off.

Related

• Client portal and paying several invoices
• Bank debit
• Declined payment reasons
• Payment methods in the documentation