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Card class: Non-Hero • Category: Payment Gateway

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At a glance

The breakdown of which payment methods customers use to pay Recharge subscription rebills, ranked by transaction count and revenue share. On Recharge specifically, the payment-method universe is narrower than fresh-checkout traffic: only methods that support recurring saved-token billing qualify. Card-on-file (Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Discover) dominates 90+%, with PayPal Billing Agreements as a meaningful secondary, and Shop Pay tokens (on Shopify Plus stores) growing share. Apple Pay / Google Pay are present but smaller because their saved-token persistence on subscriptions is processor-dependent.
What it countsTop-N (default 8) payment-method categories from /charges where status = SUCCESS, grouped by payment_processor and card.brand / payment_method.type. Each row: count + revenue share + AOV per method.
Method categoriesVisa (debit, credit), Mastercard (debit, credit), Amex, Discover, PayPal Billing Agreements, Shop Pay (tokenised, on Shopify Plus), Apple Pay (where the underlying processor supports it on rebills), Google Pay (similar), bank-debit ACH (US, where enabled).
CurrencyCurrency-neutral count + currency-grouped revenue.
Failed / declinedExcluded from method volume here; method-by-decline cross-tab is on the roadmap.
Refunds / disputesOriginal successful charge counts; refund / dispute on top is tracked elsewhere.
Time window30D vsP default.
Alert triggerMix-shift: any method’s share moving >5pp vsP. sentiment_key: payment_method_health.
Reading hintsAmex share rising: usually correlates with higher AOV and higher chargeback rate. PayPal share rising: often a marketing-driven shift after BFCM. Card brand mix shouldn’t change rapidly; if it does, investigate signup-flow changes.
Rolesowner, finance, operations

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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.

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Worked example

“Daily Greens Co”. 30-day window 03 Apr 26 to 02 May 26.
RankMethodCharges% of countRevenue (USD)% of revenueAOVDecline rate
1Visa credit9,82048%USD 920,18048%USD 93.715.1%
2Mastercard credit4,12020%USD 380,40020%USD 92.335.4%
3Amex1,8509%USD 198,75010%USD 107.438.2%
4PayPal Billing Agreement1,4207%USD 132,8007%USD 93.524.9%
5Visa debit1,1806%USD 96,4005%USD 81.696.8%
6Shop Pay (tokenised)9805%USD 91,2005%USD 93.063.4%
7Mastercard debit7204%USD 57,8003%USD 80.287.1%
8Discover3202%USD 28,4001%USD 88.755.9%
Period totals (USD only):
  Total charges                  = 20,410
  Total revenue                  = USD 1,905,930
  Method count                   = 8 distinct
  
Method-mix observations:
  Credit (Visa + MC + Amex + Disc) = 79% of count, 79% of revenue
  Debit (Visa + MC)                = 10% of count,  8% of revenue (lower AOV, more decline)
  PayPal                           =  7% of count,  7% of revenue
  Shop Pay                         =  5% of count,  5% of revenue (lowest decline rate)
What the merchant should notice:
  1. Amex skews high AOV (USD 107.43) but high decline rate (8.2%). Amex customers tend to be higher-income and pick the larger annual prepaid plans, lifting AOV. Amex’s velocity / fraud filters are also tighter on recurring rebills, especially around month-end. The trade-off is generally favourable but worth knowing.
  2. Shop Pay has the lowest decline rate (3.4%). Shop Pay tokens are network-tokenised and tightly coupled to Shopify Payments, so card refresh is automatic and decline rate is materially below other methods. Customers who pay with Shop Pay also tend to be more engaged (they already have an active Shopify wallet). Promoting Shop Pay at signup is high-ROI.
  3. Debit AOV (USD 80, 81) is below credit AOV (USD 93, 107). Debit-card customers don’t pick the annual prepaid plan as often (they don’t have liquidity for a USD 790 upfront charge). Debit-heavy mix is a leading indicator that annual prepaid penetration won’t grow without a financing option (e.g. Affirm Buy-Now-Pay-Later for the annual plan).
  4. PayPal Billing Agreement at 7% is healthy; some Recharge stores see 15, 25% PayPal share if the brand pushed PayPal during checkout. PayPal Billing Agreements (not raw PayPal) are recurring-capable; raw PayPal one-time isn’t, customers must explicitly agree to recurring billing. Confusingly, both show up as “PayPal” in some downstream views.
  5. Discover at 2% is geographic, US-only and even there a niche. UK / EU stores will see 0% Discover.

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Sibling cards merchants should reference together

CardWhy pair it with Top Payment Methods
rec_avg_transactionAOV-by-method tells you which methods carry your premium customers.
rec_decline_rateMethod-by-decline cross-tab reveals which methods have a rebill problem.
rec_chargeback_rateAmex tends to chargeback higher; method mix matters here.
rec_total_volumeThe aggregate this card splits.
Shopify top_payment_methodsStorefront mix, broader because it includes one-time purchases too.
Stripe / Shopify Payments method mixProcessor view; should bracket from above.

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Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Where to look in the Recharge merchant portal: admin.rechargepayments.com. The closest comparable view is Recharge Admin → Analytics → Subscriptions → Payment methods for the same window. The underlying processor dashboard (Stripe / Shopify Payments) shows the same breakdown with extra fields (BIN country, card-funding type) Recharge admin doesn’t surface. Why our number may legitimately differ from the Recharge merchant portal:
ReasonDirectionWhy
Method taxonomySlight differencesRecharge admin sometimes groups all card-network as “credit card”, we split by brand.
Time zoneBoundary daysSame as other cards.
PayPal vs PayPal Billing AgreementBoth labelled PayPal in some viewsRecharge admin shows them separately; some downstream tiles aggregate.
Cross-connector reconciliation:
ComparisonExpected relationshipWhen divergence is legitimate
rec_top_payment_methods shares ↔ underlying processor method mixShould match closelySame charges, same payment methods.
Card-brand share ↔ Shopify storefront card-brand shareRecharge typically slightly differentSubscription customers self-select; Amex tends to over-index on subscriptions.

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Known limitations / merchant FAQs

“Why do my method shares not match my Shopify checkout method shares?” Recharge rebills only count methods that support recurring saved-token billing. Klarna BNPL one-time, raw PayPal one-time (without Billing Agreement), and gift cards never appear here, even though they’re real payment methods on Shopify checkout. The Recharge subscription pool is a self-selected subset. “Apple Pay / Google Pay rebill, do those work on Recharge?” Sometimes. The original Apple Pay / Google Pay token is processor-dependent, Stripe-saved tokens generally work for rebills; some other processors require re-authentication on each rebill. If you see Apple Pay show up here at all, it’s working; if it shows up at signup but never on rebills, your processor isn’t persisting the token. “My Shop Pay share is climbing rapidly, is that good?” Yes. Shop Pay tokens have the lowest decline rate of any method (network-tokenised, auto-refreshed on issuer reissue, tightly coupled with Shopify Payments). Shop Pay growth is correlated with longer subscriber lifespan and higher retention. “Should I push customers toward a specific method?” Yes, two specifically. (1) Shop Pay if you’re on Shopify Plus, lowest decline rate. (2) PayPal Billing Agreement (NOT raw PayPal) for customers who don’t want to share card details. Avoid pushing prepaid debit cards, those will fail rebill. “Amex chargeback rate is higher, should I block Amex?” No. Amex’s chargeback rate is offset by its higher AOV and longer subscriber lifespan. The math is almost always favourable: don’t drop Amex unless your fraud rate is structurally high (above 1% on Amex specifically). “Method mix changed dramatically month-over-month, what changed?” Almost always a checkout-flow change. New “Pay with Shop Pay” CTA at checkout? Removal of Apple Pay button? A/B test on payment-method ordering? Check for product / engineering deploys in the same week. “Visa debit / Mastercard debit lower AOV, why?” Debit-card customers tend to skip the annual prepaid plan (USD 790 upfront is uncomfortable on a debit card). They stay on monthly. AOV trails by ~ USD 10, 15. “PayPal Billing Agreement vs PayPal regular, what’s the difference?” Billing Agreement is the recurring-capable variant where the customer explicitly grants the merchant permission to charge their PayPal balance / linked card on a schedule. Regular PayPal one-time doesn’t permit that. On Recharge, only Billing Agreements appear here; if a customer paid via PayPal one-time on signup, the next rebill won’t go through unless they accepted the Billing Agreement. “How can I see method-by-decline cross-tab?” Coming on the roadmap. For now, Recharge admin Charges → Failed → group by method is the equivalent.

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Top Payment Methods 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 or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.