What is a recurring card payment?¶

A recurring card payment is a later merchant charge under an earlier agreement or stored credential. The cardholder does not necessarily act or authenticate at each execution time.

Setup governs later charges¶

Subscriptions, memberships and instalments can create the authority. Later merchant-initiated events may use a token and can continue after card replacement through credential updating. Descriptors may differ from the service name.

Disputes can arise from forgotten consent, unclear cancellation, merchant error, compromise or charges outside the agreed scope.

Preserve origin, scope and cancellation¶

Obtain the original agreement, merchant account, endpoint, authentication, schedule, stored credential or token, notifications, transaction history and cancellation requests. Ask issuer or processor how each event was classified.

Distinguish customer-authorised setup from later merchant execution. Earlier consent does not automatically authorise every amount or change.