Retry Failed Recurring Gift Payments

Sometimes recurring gift payments fail to process. This can be due to a soft rejection, such as a payment that exceeds the card's credit limit, or a hard rejection, such as a card that's reported lost or stolen. To help you recover a failed payment, you can retry it from its record.

Note: Credit card recurring gift payments that fail due a temporary soft rejection are automatically retried a specific number of times based on recurring gift processing setting in Control panel, Settings, Gift management. For more information, see Gift Management Settings.

When a recurring gift payment fails, a $0.00 payment record appears in the donor's history after it is approved in a batch. From the payment record, under Comments, you can view the reason for the failure.

Depending on why the payment failed, you may need to make changes before you retry it. For example, if the donor's credit card expired, amend the recurring gift to update its payment information. Then, return to the failed payment to retry it. For more information, see Recurring Gift Amendments.

When you retry a payment, it's for the current amount on the recurring gift record. This amount may differ from the initial payment attempt.

At the top of the $0.00 failed payment record, an alert appears. From the alert, select Retry payment now.

  • If the retry attempt succeeds, the payment record updates to reflect the new payment details.

  • If the retry attempt fails, the $0.00 payment record remains and the comments update to show the most recent failure details.

Note: There are times when retrying a payment isn't available, such as when the related recurring gift no longer exists.