Glossary
Recurring payment
A recurring payment is a charge repeated on a schedule under an agreement the payer gave once: a monthly subscription, an annual licence, a weekly delivery. With cards it is built on a stored token and merchant-initiated transactions after an authenticated first payment; with bank methods on mandates, such as UPI mandates in India or variable recurring payments in the UK. Its economics depend on retention: retries within the schemes' limits, updated cards and a payer told before a charge fails.
The pieces that keep it running
A token that survives a change of acquirer, so the subscription does not depend on one provider. Correct MIT indicators, so issuers approve without a challenge. A retry schedule for funds declines within the schemes’ limits, and no retries of hard declines. Expiry checks that warn before a card lapses. Webhooks that tell the merchant about every failed renewal so it can write to the payer.
Where cards are not the rail
UPI mandates in India, direct debit in Europe, PayTo in Australia and variable recurring payments in the UK are bank-based agreements with their own rules on amounts and notice; wallets with stored agreements follow the same idea. The catalogue marks recurring support per method.
On the platform
Tranzify’s vault keeps the tokens and the first transaction’s reference, sets the indicators, checks expiries every hour, caps the attempts per payment and records every charge and attempt in the journal; bank-based mandates are enabled with the providers that offer them.
Updated: 2026-11-08