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A recovery case is the unit of work Airdun tracks. It is opened when a Stripe payment fails, enriched with everything relevant to that failure, and closed when the payment is recovered or the sequence is exhausted.

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What triggers a case

Every payment_failed event from Stripe opens a case. Airdun handles the full spectrum of failure types:
  • Card expired — the card on file has passed its expiry date
  • Insufficient funds — the account balance was too low at the time of the charge
  • Bank block — the issuing bank blocked the transaction
  • Card declined — a generic decline from the card network or issuer
  • Limit exceeded — the customer’s card or account limit was reached
  • 3DS friction — the payment required Strong Customer Authentication that wasn’t completed
  • Auth failed — authentication or authorization was refused
Each failure type has its own context and resolution path. See Recovery Strategy for how that shapes the plan.

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What a case contains

Once a case is opened, Airdun enriches it with every available signal before building the strategy.

Failure reason & Stripe data

The exact failure code from Stripe, the invoice, the amount, and any prior retry history associated with the charge.

Customer data

Name, email address, country, detected language, and billing history — tenure, payment track record, and subscription tier.

Product-usage signals

How actively the customer uses your product, their engagement level, and their estimated value to your business.

Channels available

Which outreach channels Airdun can use for this customer — email, SMS, WhatsApp, in-app wall — based on the contact data Stripe has on file and your connected integrations.

Signals from similar past cases

Anonymized patterns from comparable failures across all Airdun clients — same failure type, similar customer profile, same country.

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Case lifecycle

1

Open

Airdun detects the payment_failed event from Stripe and creates the case.
2

Strategy designed

The algorithm processes the enriched case context and builds the recovery sequence.
3

Recovery sequence running

Airdun executes the plan — sending messages, scheduling retries, and tracking every interaction.
4

Recovered or Exhausted

The case closes as Recovered when the payment succeeds, or as Exhausted if the sequence completes without a successful charge.

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What counts as one case

One failed payment = one case. If the same customer fails again in a later billing cycle, that is a separate payment event and a new case. Each case is independent — its own enrichment, its own strategy, its own outcome. For how cases are counted against your monthly allowance, what happens at the limit, and how overages are handled, see Cases & Limits.
Airdun never cuts an active recovery sequence mid-flow, even if you reach your monthly case limit.