> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.vortexiq.ai/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Decline Rate, Recharge > Decline Rate for Recharge stores. Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre. How to read it, why it matters, and how to act on it. **Metrics type:** [Supporting Metrics](/nerve-centre/overview#metrics-types-explained) • **Category:** [Payment Gateway](/nerve-centre/connectors#connectors-by-type) ## At a glance > The percentage of attempted Recharge subscription rebills that **failed** on the first attempt: declined by the underlying processor / issuer, fraud-flagged, or hit a soft fault. The complement of [`rec_success_rate`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/recharge/success-rate). On Recharge specifically, decline rate is dominated by aging card-on-file (expired cards, replaced cards after a fraud event, closed accounts), NOT by issuer fraud filters in the way fresh-checkout traffic is. Recharge's automated retry recovers a portion over 3, 7 days; this card is first-attempt only. | | | | ------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **What it counts** | `COUNT(charges WHERE status = ERROR) ÷ COUNT(success + error in window) × 100`. First-attempt declines on charges first attempted in the window. | | **Charge type breakdown** | Recurring rebill declines dominate (typically 80, 95% of all declines). Recharge Checkout first-orders decline at a lower rate (fresh card, customer engaged). Plan-swap declines are rare. | | **Currency** | Currency-neutral (it's a rate). | | **Refunds / disputes** | Not relevant (post-success outcomes). | | **Cancellations / SKIPPED** | Excluded entirely. | | **Time window** | `7D vsP` rolling default. | | **Alert trigger** | `>8%` absolute, OR `+25%` relative spike vs prior week. `sentiment_key: decline_rate` (gauge inverted: lower is good). | | **Reason breakdown** | This card is a single rate; per-reason split is in [`rec_top_decline_reasons`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/recharge/top-decline-reasons). | | **Recovery, not visible here** | Recharge dunning retries 1, 4 times over 3, 7 days. Recovered ones flip to `SUCCESS` and stop counting here. Permanent failures feed involuntary churn. | | **Roles** | owner, finance, operations | ## Calculation Calculated automatically from your Recharge data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading. ## Worked example "Daily Greens Co". 7-day window 26 Apr 26 to 02 May 26. | Outcome on first attempt | Charges | % of attempted | | --------------------------------------- | --------- | -------------- | | Successful | 4,810 | 93.6% | | Declined: INSUFFICIENT\_FUNDS | 102 | 2.0% | | Declined: EXPIRED\_CARD | 88 | 1.7% | | Declined: DO\_NOT\_HONOR | 64 | 1.2% | | Declined: CARD\_NOT\_SUPPORTED | 14 | 0.3% | | Declined: TRANSACTION\_NOT\_PERMITTED | 21 | 0.4% | | Declined: PROCESSING\_ERROR (transient) | 18 | 0.4% | | Declined: other / minor reasons | 20 | 0.4% | | **Total declined** | **327** | **6.4%** | | **Total attempted** | **5,137** | **100%** | ```text theme={null} Decline rate (this card) = 327 ÷ 5,137 × 100 = 6.4% vs prior 7 days = 5.1% vsP delta = +1.3 pp (+25.5% relative) Alert state: TRIGGERED (relative spike threshold +25% vsP) ``` What the merchant should diagnose: 1. **6.4% is at the upper edge of healthy** but below the 8% absolute threshold. The spike vs prior period (+25.5%) is what triggered the alert; the absolute level is still tolerable. Open [`rec_top_decline_reasons`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/recharge/top-decline-reasons) to see which reason cluster grew. 2. **EXPIRED\_CARD at 88 (+30 vs prior week) suggests a card-batch reissue.** Issuers reissue cards in waves; if a major US issuer reissued April-expiry cards in late-April, customers whose new cards haven't been pushed via Account Updater fall into this bucket. Recharge Smart Dunning should recover most as customers update card-on-file in their portal. 3. **INSUFFICIENT\_FUNDS at 102 is structural** for any subscription business. End-of-month billing concentration (subscribers paid on 1st of next month) means rebills on 28, 30 of the prior month catch some customers between paychecks. Moving rebill day to mid-month for thinner-wallet segments lifts success. 4. **DO\_NOT\_HONOR cluster of 64 might indicate a fraud-flag wave.** If many of those 64 share the same BIN range, the issuer may have flagged Daily Greens as a "subscription scam" risk after a customer complained. Clear up via merchant escalation; Recharge support has standard playbook. 5. **POS-style card-present declines do NOT exist on Recharge.** All Recharge charges are card-not-present (saved tokens). So unlike Viva or Stripe Terminal, there's no "POS noise" to subtract. ## Sibling cards merchants should reference together | Card | Why pair it with Decline Rate | | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | [`rec_success_rate`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/recharge/success-rate) | Complement view. | | [`rec_top_decline_reasons`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/recharge/top-decline-reasons) | The first card to open when this rate jumps. | | [`rec_top_payment_methods`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/recharge/top-payment-methods) | Method mix often explains rate movement. | | [`rec_volume_trend`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/recharge/volume-trend) | Decline-rate spikes coincide with volume troughs. | | [`rec_chargeback_rate`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/recharge/chargeback-rate) | Different (post-success), but high decline + high chargeback = card-on-file age problem. | | Stripe / Shopify Payments authorisation rate | Underlying processor view. | | Shopify [`checkout_abandonment_rate`](/nerve-centre/shopify/checkout_abandonment_rate) | Storefront analogue for first-purchase decline. | ## Reconciling against the vendor's own dashboard **Where to look in the Recharge merchant portal:** [admin.rechargepayments.com](https://admin.rechargepayments.com). The closest comparable view is **Recharge Admin → Analytics → Charges → Failure rate** for the same window. The **Charges → Failed** filter shows the underlying ERROR list; the **Subscriptions → Dunning** view shows what's currently in retry. **Why our number may legitimately differ from the Recharge merchant portal:** | Reason | Direction | Why | | -------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Time zone bucketing** | Boundary days off | Recharge admin: store TZ. Vortex IQ: UTC. | | **Retry-queue snapshot timing** | Brief discrepancy | A failed charge that succeeds on retry day-3 disappears from this card retroactively. Catches up on next sync. | | **Cancelled-during-dunning treatment** | Theirs may exclude cancelled retries, ours includes them as ERROR | If a customer cancels their subscription mid-dunning, the in-flight failed charge stays as ERROR in our view (the attempted charge did fail). Recharge admin sometimes filters these out. | **Cross-connector reconciliation:** | Comparison | Expected relationship | When divergence is legitimate | | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | `rec_decline_rate` ↔ Stripe / Shopify Payments decline rate | Recharge usually higher | Recharge rebills hit older cards; decline rate runs 1, 3 pp higher than fresh-checkout traffic on the same processor. | | `rec_decline_rate` + `rec_success_rate` ≈ 100% | Yes | Complementary. | | `rec_decline_rate` ↔ [`recurly.rec_decline_rate`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/recurly/decline-rate) | Similar shape | Recurly's multi-processor failover can pull its rate 1, 2 pp lower for high-volume merchants. | ***
Documentation cross-reference * [`recurly.rec_decline_rate`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/recurly/decline-rate) * [`stripe.stripe_decline_rate`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/stripe/decline-rate)
## Known limitations / merchant FAQs **"What's a normal decline rate for Recharge?"** 4, 7% on first attempt is healthy for DTC subscription brands. Below 4% suggests very strong card-on-file hygiene (or aggressive Account Updater coverage). Above 8% needs investigation. Q1 (January, February) typically runs 1, 2 pp higher across the industry. **"My decline rate spiked on a single day, what happened?"** The most common cause on Recharge: a cohort billing day landed and a wave of expired-card customers all attempted at once. Cross-reference with [`rec_top_decline_reasons`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/recharge/top-decline-reasons) and the date pattern. If EXPIRED\_CARD jumped on the day matching a major issuer's reissue cycle (often around tax-year-end in the US, calendar quarter ends), that's the explanation. **"How does Recharge dunning recovery work?"** Configurable. Standard plans get 4 retries over 7 days (day 1, 3, 5, 7); Pro plans can configure custom retry schedules. Each retry hits the underlying processor; the issuer may approve later attempts as the customer's account refreshes. Dunning emails ("your payment failed, please update your card") fire on retry 1 and retry 3 typically. **"Why does Recharge decline rate run higher than Stripe one-time decline rate?"** Card age. Recharge is rebilling cards that the customer entered weeks, months, or years ago. Issuers reissue cards regularly; some never get refreshed via Account Updater. Stripe stand-alone (one-time checkout) gets a fresh card each transaction, so the card age problem doesn't exist. **"What can I actually do to lower decline rate?"** Three top-ROI levers. (1) Enable Account Updater (covered in success rate FAQ). (2) Pre-emptive customer-portal email "your card expires in 30 days, update now". (3) Move rebill-day for thin-wallet segments (e.g. customers who repeatedly fail on 28th of month) to mid-month after pay day; some Recharge merchants offer "billing-day choice" in customer portal. **"Recurly has multi-processor failover, does Recharge?"** No. Recharge is bound to a single processor per Shopify store (whatever's configured in Shopify Payments / Stripe / Authorize.Net). If the primary processor declines, Recharge does not retry on a backup processor. This is one of Recurly's competitive pitches against Recharge for high-volume merchants. **"3DS, SCA-required declines, do they show here?"** EU/UK Recharge merchants doing PSD2 SCA on rebills (rare; most rebills qualify as MIT exemption) may see SCA-required failures. They show up as `AUTHENTICATION_REQUIRED` in the decline reasons. Properly configured MIT exemption should make these near-zero on subscription rebills. **"Why do involuntary churn metrics not match decline rate × subscriber count?"** Involuntary churn = subscribers Recharge couldn't recover after all retries. It's a subset of the decline cohort: most declined-but-recovered customers don't churn. The ratio (involuntary churn ÷ first-attempt decline rate) tells you how good your dunning is. 30, 40% retry-out is the industry baseline; \<25% is excellent dunning copy + Account Updater coverage. *** ### Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre *Decline Rate* is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across Recharge and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. [Start for free](https://app.vortexiq.ai/login) or [book a demo](https://www.vortexiq.ai/contact-us) to see this metric running on your own data.