There are many ways Recurly helps subscription businesses recover revenue after a transaction fails.

There’s the sophisticated Revenue Optimization Engine, which powers our custom retry strategy, as well as Recurly’s customizable dunning, which makes it easy to automatically reach out to subscribers with on-brand messaging on an optimal cadence. All of our decline management strategies, working in concert, help merchants recover an average of 70% of invoices that would have otherwise been lost to involuntary churn.

But even before custom retries and dunning come into play, Recurly’s Account Updater preemptively prevents many transactions from failing in the first place by ensuring subscribers’ payment information is up-to-date. It’s a surprisingly simple tactic, but it matters, since one of the most common reasons payments are declined is outdated card information.

To date, Recurly merchants have enjoyed Account Updater functionality with Visa, Mastercard, and Discover cards. We’re announcing today that thanks to a new integration with American Express’ Cardrefresher technology, Account Updater functionality is now available for American Express cards.

Recurly’s integration with American Express is similar to the existing Account Updater feature we’ve offered for years, with two exceptions:

  • Cardrefresher works as a “push,” rather than a “pull”: if an American Express card number, CVV code, or expiration date changes, that information is automatically updated in Recurly’s systems on a daily basis.

  • While many gateways offer their own Account Updater functionality for Visa, Mastercard, and Discover cards, many gateways do not offer similar functionality when it comes to American Express. As a result, merchants can use Recurly’s integration with Cardrefresher even if their gateway can’t.

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Wrap Up 

We’re excited to see how this new functionality benefits our merchants that accept American Express.

Enabling Account Updater for American Express is a quick two-step process — all you need is your 10 digit American Express SE number. Check out our documentation to learn how to enable this functionality.