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How failed payments cost you revenue
Every failed card payment is revenue you already earned that never arrives. Much of it is not lost for good: many declines are temporary, and the right retry at the right moment can recover the payment without the customer doing anything.
What is involuntary churn?
Involuntary churn is revenue lost when a customer who wants to keep paying is cancelled because their payment fails, for example from insufficient funds, an expired card, or an issuer block. Unlike voluntary churn, the customer never chose to leave.
A failed payment is not the end of a customer. Many declines are soft declines, such as insufficient funds or a temporary issuer limit, and the same card can be approved later.
How much comes back depends on how failures are handled. Fixed retry schedules retry at the same intervals for every decline, while smarter recovery reads the decline reason and the issuer's signals to choose when, and whether, to retry.
This calculator shows the size of the gap. Your real failure and recovery rates are in your billing system or payment provider dashboard, so replace the example values with your own.
How to use this calculator
Enter your monthly revenue
Use your monthly recurring revenue, or the total value of card payments you attempt each month.
Enter your failure rate
The share of that revenue whose first payment attempt fails. Your payment provider reports this as declines or failed payments.
Enter your current recovery rate
The share of failed payments you eventually collect today, through retries, dunning emails or card updates.
What the results mean
| Result | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Revenue at risk each month | The value of payments that fail on the first attempt, before any recovery. |
| Revenue lost each month | What is still missing after your current recovery process. |
| Revenue lost each year | The monthly loss over twelve months, assuming similar volumes. |