Never Miss a Failed Payment Again
Stripe emails you when a payment fails. That email gets buried in your inbox between marketing newsletters and GitHub notifications. ChurnWire scores the severity, combines it with other risk signals, and tells you exactly which failed payments need your attention first.
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Failed Payments Are the Leading Cause of Involuntary Churn
Industry data consistently shows that 20-40% of all churn is involuntary — customers who didn't want to leave but whose payments failed and were never recovered. Their card expired. Their bank flagged the charge. They hit their credit limit. The subscription quietly dies, and by the time you notice, the customer has moved on.
Stripe has built-in retry logic (Smart Retries), but retries alone don't solve the problem. If the card is expired, retrying the same card won't help. If the customer's bank is declining the charge, automated retries can actually make things worse. What you need is awareness — knowing which payments failed, why, and whether this customer is showing other risk signals.
A failed payment on its own might not be urgent. But a failed payment from a customer who also downgraded last month and whose card expires next week? That's a customer you're about to lose. ChurnWire connects these signals so you can prioritize your outreach.
How ChurnWire Handles Failed Payments
Not just alerts — context and prioritization.
Severity Scoring
Not all failed payments are equal. A first-time failure on a monthly subscription is different from a third retry failure on an annual plan worth $2,400. ChurnWire weights each failure by attempt count, subscription value, and customer history to assign a severity score.
Signal Stacking
A failed payment in isolation might score 30/100. But if that customer also downgraded recently, or has a card expiring next month, or filed a dispute last quarter, the combined risk score jumps to 70+. ChurnWire looks at the full picture, not just the single event.
Daily Digest at 9am
Every morning, you get an email listing failed payments from the last 24 hours alongside all other churn risk changes. Customers are ranked by risk score so you contact the highest-value, highest-risk customers first. No logging into Stripe. No scrolling through webhooks.
Expiring Card Warnings
Why wait for a payment to fail? ChurnWire identifies customers whose cards expire in the next 30 days and surfaces them in your digest. A quick email asking them to update their payment method prevents the failure entirely.
Why Stripe's Built-In Emails Aren't Enough
Stripe does send email notifications when payments fail. The problem isn't that the notifications don't exist — it's that they lack context and prioritization. Every failed payment looks the same in your inbox: "Payment failed for customer X." There's no indication of severity, no mention of other risk signals, and no guidance on who to contact first.
If you have 500 subscribers and 10 payments fail in a week, Stripe sends you 10 identical-looking emails. Which of those 10 customers is most likely to churn? Which one is worth $200/mo vs. $20/mo? Which one also downgraded recently? Stripe doesn't tell you. You'd have to open each email, navigate to the customer in your Stripe dashboard, and manually investigate their history.
ChurnWire does that investigation automatically. It correlates the failed payment with every other signal it has about that customer and gives you a single, prioritized list. Ten minutes reading your morning digest replaces an hour of dashboard spelunking.
ChurnWire Tracks More Than Failed Payments
Failed payments are just one of six churn signals we monitor in your Stripe account.
Plan Downgrades
A customer moving to a cheaper plan is telling you they're getting less value. This is the strongest voluntary churn signal after an outright cancellation.
Cancellations
Cancel-at-period-end gives you a save window. ChurnWire flags these immediately so you can reach out before the subscription actually ends.
Disputes
A chargeback signals a relationship breakdown. ChurnWire elevates dispute-flagged customers to critical risk.
Expiring Cards
Get ahead of failed payments by prompting customers to update their card before it expires.
Refund Requests
A refund on a subscription product is a strong signal of dissatisfaction, even if the customer doesn't cancel immediately.
Payment Retries
ChurnWire tracks how many times Stripe has retried a payment and whether retries are succeeding or failing, escalating risk accordingly.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does ChurnWire replace Stripe's Smart Retries? +
No. Stripe's Smart Retries handle the automated retry logic — choosing when to retry a failed charge for the best chance of success. ChurnWire sits on top of this and tells you when retries aren't working, which customers need manual outreach, and how a failed payment fits into the bigger churn risk picture. Use both together.
Can I customize when the daily digest is sent? +
The daily digest is currently sent at 9am in your configured timezone. Custom delivery times are on our roadmap. If you need alerts faster, risk score changes are also available via the ChurnWire dashboard in real time.
How quickly does ChurnWire detect a failed payment? +
ChurnWire processes Stripe webhooks in real time. The moment a payment fails in Stripe, the customer's risk score updates in ChurnWire. The failed payment appears in your next daily digest. For urgent failures on high-value customers, you can check the dashboard anytime.
What should I do when ChurnWire alerts me to a failed payment? +
For high-risk customers (score 70+), send a personal email asking if they need help updating their payment method. For medium-risk (40-69), an automated email from your support system often works. For low-risk (under 40), Stripe's Smart Retries will usually handle it. ChurnWire helps you allocate your time where it has the most impact.
Stop Losing Customers to Failed Payments
$49/mo. 14-day free trial. Connect your Stripe account in 60 seconds and get prioritized failed payment alerts in your next morning digest.