Recurring payments are the engine behind many modern businesses.
Whether you’re running a subscription service, a membership program, or offering installment billing, you rely on your customers’ stored card data to work quietly and consistently, month after month.
But there’s a catch. And it’s a costly one.
The Hidden Problem: Card Declines from Expired or Reissued Cards
This type of decline happens behind the scenes but creates a ripple effect across your business:
- Revenue disruption. Payments stop—not because the customer canceled, but because their card changed.
- Operational friction. Your team may need to follow up manually, adding time and cost.
- Customer frustration. Even loyal customers may churn if their service is interrupted by a billing error.
- Cash flow impact. Declines pile up, and predictable income becomes anything but.
The Manual Fix—and Its Limitations
Some businesses try to patch the problem manually: sending emails to request updated payment info, prompting in-app reminders, or pausing service until a new card is entered. While these efforts may recover some revenue, they often introduce new risks:
- Customers may ignore or miss update requests.
- Service disruptions erode trust.
- Staff time gets diverted from more strategic work.
In short, manual recovery is rarely efficient and is not scalable.
The Smarter Solution
Instead of reacting to failed payments, leading businesses now take a proactive approach: automatically updating stored card data behind the scenes.
This process, commonly called account updating, connects to the major card networks (Visa, Mastercard, Discover) to check for new card details when changes occur. When a match is found, the stored card on file is refreshed before a decline ever happens.
The result? Payments go through, your billing system hums along, and your customer never has to do a thing. Sounds great, right?
How Sola Supports You
At Sola, we’ve made automated card updates easy to enable and simple to manage.
Sola’s Account Updater refreshes expired or replaced cards in real time, working directly with Visa, Mastercard, and Discover. It’s available now in your Merchant Portal, and it only costs $0.25 per successful card update—no setup fees or monthly commitments.
Once enabled, Sola checks for updates automatically and ensures your stored card payments continue without interruption.
Bottom Line
Recurring revenue only works when payments are predictable. Card declines from outdated information are one of the most avoidable threats to that predictability.
Whether you use Sola’s Account Updater or another solution, automated card refreshing is quickly becoming a best practice—and a must-have—for modern businesses that bill on a schedule.
If your team is still chasing down customers for new card info, it might be time to let automation take over — and stop missing out on sales you’ve already earned.
