Smart Payment
Start with Direct Debit and recover eligible failed collections by card, with the customer's confirmation
Smart Payment is a collection strategy: start with Direct Debit, and when an eligible collection fails, offer the customer a clear path to approve a card payment instead — connected to the same invoice. A backup card is a recovery option. It is never silently charged because a Direct Debit failed.
Choose how you collect
| Strategy | What happens | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Card only | Collect by card through hosted checkout and payment links. | You do not offer Direct Debit. |
| Direct Debit only | Collect against a customer-authorised mandate. No card is offered, including for recovery. | Direct Debit is the only rail you want. |
| Smart Payment | Start with Direct Debit. For an eligible failure, open a card recovery journey that waits for the customer's confirmation. | You want Direct Debit first with a consent-gated card fallback. |
Collection uses the card rail only. Pay by Bank is retired and is not offered as a recovery rail.
What counts as eligible
Before a recovery journey begins, RevKeen checks the collection and the business setup:
- An eligible returned collection. The failure code and collection context must support the recovery path.
- Smart Payment enabled. The business chooses the collection strategy, and a valid fallback-card path must exist for the customer.
- A customer-confirmed payment. Notification, a secure link, and active confirmation come before any card charge.
The recovery flow
- Direct Debit retries first. Insufficient funds and other soft failures are collected again automatically — up to 3 attempts, 7 working days apart for new merchants (your own saved settings are kept). Your customer gets an advance notice before every attempt. See Dunning.
- When the attempts run out, or the failure can't be retried (for example, the account is closed), RevKeen emails your customer a link to pay the invoice by card instead. The invoice stays open until it's paid.
- The customer confirms on a secure hosted page and pays by card. Nothing is charged without that confirmation.
- If the invoice is still unpaid after your maximum dunning days, the subscription becomes unpaid, or cancelled if your dunning settings cancel — the same end state as a card subscription.
Hard failures skip the retries and go straight to the payment request. The card payment request clears the invoice and keeps the subscription active.
Checkout with card and mandate together
A Smart Payment checkout can take a card payment and capture a Direct Debit mandate in one session. The two legs resolve independently — a paid card is never reversed because the mandate half failed, and a signed mandate is never cancelled because the card half failed:
| Card payment | Mandate capture | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Paid | Signed | Completed |
| Paid | Abandoned | Completed, with a mandate follow-up |
| Declined | Signed | Payment pending, mandate signed |
| Declined | Abandoned | Abandoned |
Configuration
- Settings → Direct Debit: the soft-fail retry count and spacing (new merchants start at 3 attempts, 7 working days apart), and what happens when retries run out.
- Fallback card path: the customer needs a way to pay by card when recovery opens — a saved card or the hosted payment page. Without one, recovery cannot proceed.
- Days to pay after a failed first payment: how long the customer has to complete the card payment (default 7 days, 1–30). Paid in time, the subscription starts; past the window, it expires.
Customer experience
Your customer gets a recovery message explaining what happened, what is owed, and how to continue — then a secure hosted link to a card recovery page. The invoice, subscription, and mandate states stay visible in the dashboard throughout, and every step is recorded for audit.
Webhooks
Follow a recovery with the public collection and payment events in the event catalogue: collection.scheduled, collection.notice_sent, collection.succeeded, collection.failed, payment.failed, and payment.succeeded. An indemnity claim sends collection.indemnity_claimed. No public webhook is sent for an unpaid return after success — watch for the dashboard dispute record, the Inbox alert, and the reopened invoice.
Fees
Card recovery payments process like any card payment under your Elavon agreement; Direct Debit collection costs are recorded per collection. See Fees and How fees work for the canonical wording.
Related
- Dunning — Retry schedule and recovery end states
- Operate Direct Debit — Mandates, collections, and unpaid returns
- Subscriptions — Billing lifecycle and dunning
Last updated 1 Oct 2026 by David Lindblad · Owner: david · Reviewed 1 Oct 2026 · Next review 29 Dec 2026