If there’s one truth about global subscription payments, it’s that what works in one market rarely works in another.  If you’ve already started selling globally, you quickly discover the data and regulatory nuances between a one-time transaction and the recurring payment.

Getting that first successful checkout is only the beginning. The real test is keeping renewals alive each month, across borders, issuers, mandates, and payment methods that all play by different rules. Add in country-specific consumer protection laws and wallet preferences, and a single misconfiguration can mean not just a lost transaction, but a lost subscriber..

The Recurly Payments team works every day to untangle that complexity so global subscribers can renew without friction. 

Here are some of the biggest lessons we’ve learned (and the takeaways every subscription business should know)

  • Stop treating global payments as a monolith. No single gateway delivers the best approvals everywhere. Many “global” gateways push traffic cross-border instead of using local acquiring, which drags down auth rates. And turning on a regional method isn’t just a checkbox—it requires knowing how that method is processed (mandates, settlement rules, SCA/3DS, etc.).

  • The CIT vs. MIT divide is the most overlooked failure point. The authorization that got you the first payment (Customer-Initiated) often won't work for the renewal (Merchant-Initiated). This misconfiguration is an entirely avoidable cause of churn.

  • Fraud looks different across borders. Flexible, pre-authorization fraud prevention protects growth while minimizing false declines

  • You can't win without a central intelligence layer. The only way to navigate this complexity is with a platform that sits above your gateways—turning your payment stack from a liability into a growth engine

What are the hidden challenges of global subscription management?

Challenges abound across markets, but having the right strategy can make all the difference.

1. Cross-border approval rate challenges

In subscriptions, your first charge is a customer-initiated transaction (CIT). Every renewal that follows is a merchant-initiated transaction (MIT) — meaning the subscriber isn’t present.

The difference matters. Incorrectly configured $1Auth/$0 Verification transactions  or 3-D Secure (3DS) flows can cause unnecessary declines. For example, if a MIT charge is treated like a CIT, it might trigger extra misconfigurations that fail automatically.

How Recurly helps:

Recurly optimizes these authentication flows to keep approval rates high. Our platform ensures your first transaction follows the right verification rules and subsequent renewals qualify as MITs where eligible—so you maintain trust and prevent unnecessary declines.

2. Local payment expectations for recurring payments

Relying on credit cards internationally isn't just bad business — it's a direct path to subscriber churn. In much of Europe, bank debits like SEPA are expected. In India, it's UPI. If you aren't offering the right recurring local payment methods at checkout, you're signaling to subscribers that you don’t understand their market.When it comes to checkout, global reach means local relevance.

How Recurly helps: 

Through integrations with Stripe and Adyen, Recurly enables merchants to offer the most popular regional payment methods automatically. Whether it’s SEPA in Germany or iDEAL in the Netherlands, Recurly localizes the payment experience—so your checkout converts, and your renewals stick.

3. Regulatory friction from regional mandates

Cross-border compliance is a moving target. Regulations like PSD2, SCA, and RBI mandates evolve constantly, and even a well-configured first payment can fail at renewal if the issuer or region tightens its authentication requirements.

Take India, for instance. A UPI AutoCollect transaction can fail if the pre-debit notification timing isn’t properly configured. These details may sound small, but they determine whether a recurring charge goes through.

How Recurly helps:

Recurly continuously tracks and implements regional compliance updates across issuers and payment types. Our platform automatically adapts to changing requirements, helping you maintain renewal success in markets like India, Europe, and beyond.

4. Renewal failures

Cards expire.  But simply retrying a failed payment three times in 24 hours is a clumsy, expensive strategy. This becomes even more complex on a global scale when a card does expire. Worse, it doesn't work for non-card methods like ACH or SEPA, which have their own rules. 

Without understanding why a payment failed (soft vs. hard decline) and applying smart, context-aware retries, you're just burning money on transaction fees and churning good subscribers.

How Recurly helps:

Recurly’s intelligent retries use machine learning — not a fixed schedule — to determine when and how to retry a failed payment. By analyzing contextual decline data from billions of transactions, Recurly times renewals perfectly, recovering revenue that traditional retry scripts can’t.

5. Local rails beat one-size-fits-all

Here’s a hard truth: no single gateway delivers the best approval rates everywhere. Many “global” gateways just push your traffic cross-border instead of using local acquiring, which kills your authorization rates. True localization isn’t just a checkbox; it’s a strategy that requires routing transactions to the right local processor.

How Recurly helps:

Recurly supports multi-gateway orchestration and currency-based routing. This lets merchants process renewals through local acquirers to increase approval rates, reduce costs, and optimize settlement efficiency in every region.

6. Understanding tax implications across borders

Even when everything works, success creates its own complexity: international tax compliance, evolving fraud vectors, and fragmented reporting. Without a partner to keep ahead of changes, you can face fines in the millions.

How Recurly helps:

Recurly integrates with Avalara AvaTax to apply real-time, location-accurate taxes to every invoice. Paired with Reach, a global Merchant of Record (MoR), Recurly simplifies indirect tax obligations across markets, helping you scale fast and stay compliant.

7. Managing global fraud

Expanding into new markets can introduce an entirely new set of fraud challenges. Risk rules and fraud signals shift dramatically across borders, and using an inflexible fraud prevention system can either block legitimate subscribers or let bad actors through.

How Recurly helps:

In addition to integrating with native fraud prevention from many payment processors, like Stripe’s Radar and Adyen’s Revenue Protect, Recurly also integrates with Kount to add advanced fraud screening to your payment flows — valuable as your cross-border traffic mix changes and you introduce new APMs. Recurly’s integration with Kount pre-screens transactions before authorization, blocking fraud while letting legitimate subscribers through. 

8. Fragmented data across gateways and payment methods

Every gateway and alternative payment method (APM) reports different decline reasons, error codes, and chargeback classifications. Without a centralized view, identifying where revenue is leaking — whether from authorization, 3DS, retries, or refunds—is nearly impossible.

How Recurly helps:

Recurly’s unified dashboard consolidates all payment data into one place. This single lens makes it easier to identify bottlenecks, measure success, and optimize renewals across every region, payment type, and gateway.

A quick-start guide for regional expansion

Scaling globally doesn’t have to take years. These are the foundational payment methods for each region — all managed through Recurly’s unified platform.

  • United States: Cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal (including Venmo), ACH.

  • Europe / UK: Cards with 3DS, SEPA, iDEAL, Bancontact, Sofort.

  • India: UPI AutoPay and Stripe card e-mandates.

  • LATAM: Credit cards via Worldpay, EBANX, and dLocal, plus local options like PIX Automático and MercadoPago (coming soon).

(Tip: During gateway migrations, keep old gateways active for refunds to avoid disruptions.)

Stop building on a broken foundation

Taking your subscription business global isn’t about flipping a switch and being good to go. It’s about building a payment stack that’s resilient, intelligent, and built for the realities of renewal.

You don’t have to engineer it all yourself. Recurly provides the central intelligence to optimize renewals, the flexibility to connect the right gateways, and the partnerships to handle taxes, mandates, and fraud.

Ready to stop leaving cross-border revenue on the table? Talk to an expert and see how Recurly can help you scale.