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Two kinds of retry can charge a failed invoice:
  • Stripe’s own retries (Smart Retries), under the retry policy set in your Stripe account. They always run; Airdun never changes them.
  • Adaptive retries, placed by Airdun on top of Stripe’s, when they are on for the use case.

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Stripe’s retries

Your Stripe retry policy (how many retries, over which window) is confirmed under Business context → Stripe. Confirming it is a required workspace step of the setup checklist. It describes what Stripe does; Airdun pushes nothing to your Stripe settings. Airdun times its messages around these retries, and each case shows the next attempt Stripe has announced.

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Adaptive retries

Stripe retries on a fixed schedule. With adaptive retries, Airdun can also retry the invoice at moments that schedule misses, for example right after the customer engages, or once Stripe has stopped trying.
An adaptive retry pays the invoice. Airdun asks Stripe to pay the failed invoice with the payment method already on file: the same invoice, the same amount, the same card Stripe’s own retry would use. It never creates a new charge outside an existing invoice. See Data Access.
Adaptive retries are used sparingly: only when the bank allows the charge to be tried again, never on a lost or stolen card, and in limited numbers so the total stays within what card networks accept. They are available on Renewals and Free trials (on by default), and turned on or off per use case under Autopilot → [use case] → Adaptive retries. New customers has none.

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The customer’s own payment

When a customer updates their card on Stripe’s hosted invoice page, Stripe charges it immediately: that is the fastest path to recovery. The card is then saved as the subscription’s default, so future renewals use it too.