Payment management and autopay setup

Autopay charges the customer’s saved payment method automatically instead of emailing or texting an invoice to pay. It only ever turns on through Set up autopay on the schedule’s Payment management card, which asks who enters the customer’s payment details: you, from a signed contract, or the customer themselves, by saving a method from an invoice you send them (see the next tab). If the signed-contract option is unavailable, hover it or focus it with the keyboard to see the required NACHA-compliant signed payment agreement guidance.

1. See the autopay status row.
2. Click Set up autopay on a customer with no payment method yet.
3. Choose to enter the customer's payment details yourself, from a signed contract.
4. Check the authorization box.
5. Optionally record an authorization reference.
6. Click Continue to payment details.
7. Switch between Card and Bank account (ACH).
8. Save the payment method; autopay turns on automatically.
9. Click Add backup method to save a second one that only charges if the primary fails.
10. Switch to the verified example with three saved methods, then select Set as backup on the additional Mastercard. The backup you added above was already designated when saved.
11. See the backup payment method.
12. See what happens if a charge fails.
13. See the backup-then-retry order.
14. Turn autopay off for a charging customer.

Adding a payment method for a customer requires their signed agreement under Authorization documents. For a bank account, select the agreement, enter its authorization date, and confirm the bank-debit terms and that the customer received a copy. Stripe checks eligible bank accounts without microdeposits; a bank account becomes available for recurring charges only after setup succeeds. Uploading a file does not verify its signature or legal terms. Any existing account still awaiting microdeposit verification must finish that verification or be replaced through a new authorized setup.

When you enter a card yourself, the form shows one line with the maximum credit-card surcharge and a checkbox confirming the customer’s signed authorization includes the autopay terms; click that link to read the full authorization and surcharge terms. The customer’s own autopay page uses the same pattern (“I agree to the autopay terms”).

Add card surcharge to these invoices: a per-schedule switch in Payment management, matching the company-wide Card surcharges switch in Payment settings. Turn it off to leave the surcharge off this schedule’s invoices. It is unavailable when card surcharges are off for your company or waived for this customer.

Customers can cancel autopay themselves: once autopay is on (or waiting for the customer to save a method), the Payment management card shows this toggle. On by default. Turn it off and the customer can no longer cancel autopay from the manage page or their receipts, they have to contact you directly, everywhere those surfaces would otherwise have shown a Cancel autopay link, they instead show “To stop autopay, contact [Your Company] at [email] and/or [phone].” Updating the saved payment method always stays available to the customer either way. This is NACHA-compliant either way: the rule is that the authorization must say how to revoke, not that revocation has to be self-service, and “contact the business” satisfies that as long as you actually honor the request when the customer calls or emails.

Replace is a swap, not an addition: saving a new primary method retires whichever one autopay was charging before, so the customer is never left with old, still-live methods piling up in the background. A backup is kept separate. Once the primary is verified, Add backup method saves a second one that only gets charged if the primary fails; the small × next to Backup method removes it on its own. Removing either method, whether with the primary’s Remove button or the backup’s ×, opens a confirmation naming the method and what happens next before anything is actually deleted.