Fixing Failed Payments

When a scheduled payment doesn't go through, your service doesn't drop instantly. TrekMail follows a specific recovery flow that gives you time to fix the underlying issue — but the exact behaviour depends on whether you've ever paid before. This guide covers each case in detail, plus how to recover.

What happens immediately after a failure

Two things happen the moment Stripe (or NOWPayments for crypto) reports a charge failure:

1. The subscription moves to a non-paid status — past_due, incomplete, or unpaid depending on the exact failure mode.
2. You get an email titled "Payment failed — action required to keep TrekMail active" with the invoice number, amount, and a link straight to the Billing page.

Open the Billing page and an amber Payment failed banner appears at the top. The message changes based on your account history.

Case A — You've paid before and a renewal failed

If you've ever made a successful payment on this account, you get a 7-day grace window. This applies to mail-plan renewals, Drive Add-on renewals, and White Label Lite renewals alike.

What happens during those 7 days:

• The banner message reads: "We couldn't renew your subscription. Please update your payment method below."
• Your service stays fully active — all mailboxes work, your storage is intact, your branded domain (if you have White Label Lite) keeps serving.
• Stripe automatically retries the charge several times on its own schedule. You don't have to click anything for the retry to happen — once your card is fixed (or you've added a new one and made it default), the next scheduled retry succeeds and the banner clears.
• The grace counter starts from the moment of the first failure, not from the original renewal date. So you have 7 calendar days from when the failure was logged.

If the 7-day window expires without a successful charge, your plan downgrades to the free tier. Mailboxes go read-only (existing email stays accessible; new sending stops at plan limits). Drive over-quota cleanup runs on its standard 7-day-after schedule. White Label Lite enters its own 7-day grace window before the branded URL stops serving.

You can still recover after downgrade — pay the outstanding invoice and we restore the plan — but the gap may have caused mailbox-level rate-limiting and the cleanup-day countdown means file-level data loss is possible after the second 7 days. Don't wait it out.

Case B — Your first payment after trial failed

If you've never had a successful payment on this account (you're coming off a 14-day trial), there's no grace period. The plan downgrades to free immediately.

The banner message is different: "Your trial ended but we couldn't charge your card. Add a new card below, or pick a different plan on the Plans page to switch immediately."

Why no grace: trial-only accounts have evaluated the product for two weeks already; the grace window is reserved for paying customers experiencing a transient billing issue. To recover, add a working card on the Billing page and pick a plan again from the Plans page. Once you complete a successful charge, you become a "paying customer" and any future failures will get the standard 7-day window.

Case C — 3D Secure not completed

If your card requires 3D Secure (most European and many international cards do) and the authentication step times out or you close the popup before completing it, the subscription gets incomplete status. There's no grace period for incomplete — it counts as "you started but didn't finish payment", and you'd need to retry the checkout flow from the Billing page.

The fix: open Billing, click Add payment method if you need a different card, then complete the 3DS challenge fully when prompted.

How to actually fix it — step by step

The Billing page is the only place you need:

1. Open the Billing page.
2. If your card has expired, been replaced, or is otherwise unusable, click Add payment method and add a new one. Once it's saved, click Make default on the new card.
3. If your existing card just declined this one time (bank flagged it, temporary funds issue), you usually don't need to do anything in the dashboard — call your bank to authorise "Stripe" or "TrekMail" charges, then wait. Stripe's next scheduled retry will succeed and the banner will clear.
4. If you want to retry immediately instead of waiting for the next Stripe attempt, scroll down to your invoice list. Each failed invoice has a Pay link on the right that opens Stripe's hosted invoice page where you can complete the payment with any saved method or a fresh card right now.

There is no "Retry" button per se — paying the invoice via the Pay link is the manual equivalent of waiting for Stripe's auto-retry.

What "Pay" actually does

The Pay link opens Stripe's secure invoice page (invoice.stripe.com/i/...) for that specific invoice. You can complete the charge there with:

• Your existing saved default method (just click Pay).
• A different saved method.
• A fresh card you enter on the spot.
• Any of the Stripe-supported one-time methods available in your region (Apple Pay, Google Pay, Link, Cash App, regional wallets).

Once payment clears, Stripe pings our webhook and the subscription flips back to active. The Billing page reflects the new status within a few seconds.

Common failure reasons and what to do

Add-on payment failures

Add-on subscriptions (Drive Storage, White Label Lite) bill separately from your mail plan, on their own renewal date. They can fail independently — your mail plan might be paid up while an add-on goes into Past Due.

If a renewal fails, Stripe retries on the same schedule as a mail-plan failure (a few attempts over several days). During retries, your add-on stays active:

• Drive Storage keeps your full capacity. Files remain readable and writable. After grace expires, the add-on is canceled and the standard 7-day cleanup grace runs — your files stay readable but you can't add new ones.
• White Label Lite keeps your branded domain live and emails branded. After grace expires, the add-on is canceled and your branded domain enters its 7-day grace window before the SSL certificate is removed and the URL stops serving.

Where to fix it:

1. Open Billing. The failed invoice shows up under the add-on it belongs to, with an amber pending badge.
2. Update your card if it's expired, or add a new payment method.
3. Click Pay next to the failed invoice for an immediate retry, or just leave it and let Stripe's next auto-retry pick up the new card.

Once payment clears, the add-on returns to normal renewal at the next cycle. If the add-on already entered its grace window before you fixed it, paying the failed invoice reactivates it in place — your brand setup or storage capacity come back without any reconfiguration. See Canceling White Label Lite for the full reactivation flow.

Crypto underpayments

Crypto payments (NOWPayments) have a separate failure mode: underpayment. You sent the right coin but slightly less than the invoice amount, typically because of wallet fees or rate changes between when the invoice was generated and when your transfer settled.

The order stays in "Unpaid" status. There's no automatic retry — crypto doesn't have a card to retry against.

The fix: open a support ticket from the Support page with your transaction ID. We can:

• Manually approve if the shortfall is small (typically under a few percent), and the subscription activates on the next sync.
• Refund the underpayment (minus network fees) so you can try the payment again with the corrected amount.

We don't do this automatically because manual approval is a judgement call — your support agent reviews the transaction and decides on the spot.

What about Drive Add-on or Verifier credit charges that fail?

Verifier credits and Drive Add-on upgrades charge once, not on a renewal schedule. If the charge fails:

• Verifier credits — the order is canceled, no credits added. You can try again with a different card.
• Drive Add-on resize — the resize doesn't apply, and the page shows the error inline. Fix the card and retry.

These don't trigger grace windows because there's no subscription state to protect.

When to contact support

Most failed payments resolve via card updates and Stripe retries. Open a ticket from the Support page when:

• Your card was charged successfully but the dashboard still shows "Payment failed" after 10+ minutes.
• A crypto payment went through on-chain but your invoice still says "Unpaid".
• You've added multiple cards and all show declined for unclear reasons.
• You hit a 3D Secure loop where the challenge succeeds but Stripe rejects the result.

In all those cases include the invoice ID — it's the line starting with in_... shown next to each invoice in your Billing list.