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Metrics type: Supporting Metrics • 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.

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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.
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

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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: Cross-connector reconciliation:

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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.