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How to Detect Expired Cards

Expired cards can sneak up on any subscription business, but identifying them early is key to keeping your revenue flowing. Here are some ways to detect them:

  • General Approach: Review failed payments for error codes indicating card expiration. Most payment processors include these details in their logs.
  • In Slicker: Use the Payments Analytics feature to identify transactions failing due to expired cards. Learn more about this tool on the Analytics & Reporting page.

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Implications of Expired Cards

Expired cards often lead to payment failures, which can result in:

  • Customer Churn: In most cases, manual intervention from the customer is required to update their card details. Without this, they may unintentionally churn.
  • Revenue Impact: Every failed transaction is a potential hit to your bottom line.

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What Can Be Done?

Reactive Solutions

  • Retries: Unfortunately, retries won’t help with expired cards unless the user updates their billing details.
  • Account Updater Services: Some payment processors, like Stripe, offer tools to automatically update card details when available. These tools are helpful but don’t cover every scenario - for example, if a customer changes bank, or their new card is not linked to their account.
  • Dunning Emails: Sending follow-up emails after a failed payment can help recover some payments, but this approach only works after the failure has already occurred and is not a guaranteed success.

Proactive Solutions

A proactive approach can reduce the impact of expired cards. By identifying cards that are about to expire and notifying customers in advance, you can prevent failed payments before they happen. Proactive communication not only reduces failed payments but also enhances the customer experience by ensuring a seamless subscription process.

In Slicker you can use the Expiring Cards tab on the Revenue Recovery page to see which customers’ cards are nearing expiration. Combine this with insights from the Analytics & Reporting page to notify customers ahead of time.

Slicker helps you reduce involuntary churn and dealing with expired cards is one of the ways we do this.