Note:
Kajabi Payments is currently available to Kajabi Heroes whose businesses are registered in the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and select European countries.
Learn how to manage failed recurring payments with Kajabi Payments.
In this article:
What is a Failed Payment and Why Do They Occur?
Payments can fail when a customer’s recurring payment (subscription or payment plan) is not processed successfully. These failures can stem from a variety of reasons, including:
Lack of a payment method tied to the customer record.
An expired payment method.
The payment is declined, which can happen for a variety of reasons.
How Does Kajabi Payments Handle Failed Payments?
Kajabi Payments automatically retries a failed payment for up to four attempts over three weeks. Kajabi Payments utilizes Stripe as a backend provider, including Stripe’s smart retries that are based on AI Machine Learning.
For example, the attempt could be sooner if it predicts there is a higher chance of success due to new information. For additional insights, you can refer to Stripe's documentation on Smart Retries.
What happens when a payment fails?
If a payment fails, the status of the purchase record becomes Past Due wherever it is displayed in Kajabi
On the Transactions Details page, the failed charge shows a Retrying status.
If a retry succeeds, the status is set back to Active.
If all 4 retries fail, the subscription or payment plan will be Canceled which revokes product access for the customer.
Automatic Emails
When a payment fails, Kajabi will automatically send emails to:
Your customer, prompting them to update their payment information when a payment fails. Learn how to customize the failed payment email notification to your customer here.
Your email on file, alerting you why the payment didn't go through, how many times we've retried, and the approximate date for the next attempt.
Viewing Failed Payments with Kajabi Payments
To access information regarding failed payments, follow these steps:
Navigate to the Payments page.
Click the Transactions tab
Click Filter.
In the Filter Menu, select Failed, and Kajabi Payments.
Apply the filter to view failed payments.
Use “...” to view more details about the failed payment:
Exporting Failed Payments
To export your failed payment data::
Go to Sales > Transactions
Filter for Failed payments
Click Export:
Auto Revoke/Auto Grant After Failed Payment
If you want to revoke product access after the first failed payment for a subscription or payment plan, and then have access auto-granted back to your customer once the payment has succeeded, this setting can now be turned on from your Customer Payments setting page. This feature is exclusively available to Kajabi Payments and Stripe.
To turn on Auto Revoke/Auto Grant:
From your Kajabi Dashboard, navigate to Settings.
In Settings, select Customer Payments.
Toggle the box under the revoke and grant access section.
Hit save to apply the changes:
Note:
The auto revoke/grant feature does not trigger grant automations.
Manually Retrying Failed Payments
With Kajabi Payments, you can now manually retry a failed payment. This process can be attempted twice every 24 hours, per transaction.
To manually retry a failed payment:
From the Kajabi Dashboard select the Sales tab.
Click Payments.
Select the Transactions tab.
Locate the transaction you wish to retry, then click on the payment.
Select Retry Payment.
Click Retry Payment in the pop-up window to confirm:
Turning Off Automatic Retries
If you'd prefer to stop retries after a failed payment—without canceling the subscription—you can now do so directly in Kajabi:
To disable automatic retries on a failed payment:
Go to Sales > Payments > Transactions
Locate the failed transaction. You can do this by filtering by status: Failed
Once you have selected the failed transaction click the “...” menu and select Turn Off Automatic Retries
Once turned off:
Retry attempts will stop immediately
The transaction will update from Retrying to Failed
The subscription remains active unless manually canceled
To disable automatic retries when canceling a subscription or payment plan:
Go to Sales > Payments > Transactions
Locate the subscription or payment plan.
Click the “...” menu and select cancel subscription
Select your cancelation option and check the box “Turn off automatic retries on all failed payments”
This action will disable automatic retirees on all current retrying transactions when the subscription or payment plan is cancelled.
To disable automatic retries when pausing a subscription or payment plan:
Go to Sales > Payments > Transactions
Locate the subscription or payment plan.
Click the “...” menu and select pause subscription
Check the box “Turn off automatic retries on all failed payments”
Click the “Pause subscription” button
This action will disable automatic retirees on all current retrying transactions when the subscription or payment plan is paused. Unpausing the subscription or payment plan does not re-enable auto-collection for the affected transactions.
Note:
This is only available for Kajabi Payments and only applies to subscription or payment plan types.
Failed Payment Decline Reasons
To access reasons for payment declines and our recommended next steps, please click here.
And that’s how you can manage failed payments with Kajabi Payments! If you have questions, run into issues, or have feedback to share, reach out to [email protected].