If you run a subscription business on Razorpay, failed payments are an unavoidable cost of recurring billing. The good news: most of that revenue is recoverable if you act quickly and systematically. This guide covers how dunning works with Razorpay and how to automate it.
1. Detect failures via webhooks
Razorpay emits payment.failed events. By subscribing to these webhooks, you can capture every failed charge in real time — the amount, the customer, and the failure reason — instead of discovering lapsed subscriptions weeks later.
2. Retry on a smart schedule
Not every failure should be retried the same way. A charge that failed for insufficient funds is worth retrying after a day; a charge that failed because the card expired will never succeed on retry — the customer has to update their payment method. Tuning retry timing to the failure code is what separates effective recovery from wasted attempts.
3. Send the customer a payment link
For failures that need customer action, Razorpay Payment Links are the cleanest path. You generate a hosted link for the outstanding amount and email it to the customer — they pay in a couple of taps via UPI, card, or netbanking, with no account or login required.
4. Email with care (and compliance)
Dunning emails should be helpful, not naggy: explain what happened, reassure the customer, and link them to pay. Always include a working unsubscribe option, and stop sending to anyone who unsubscribes, bounces, or complains — both to stay compliant and to protect your sender reputation.
5. Automate the whole loop
Manually tracking failures, scheduling retries, generating links, and sending emails does not scale. Revivopay connects to your Razorpay account and runs this entire loop automatically — smart retries, AI-personalised dunning emails, hosted payment links, and suppression — so you recover revenue without lifting a finger.
A note on international cards
Razorpay accounts are domestic by default. If most of your customers are in India, this is exactly what you want — UPI and domestic cards cover the market. International card acceptance is a separate Razorpay feature you can enable later as you expand.