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Failing credit cards
Policy for unpaid subscription periods
Policy for unpaid subscription periods

What happens if we cannot not charge your card for your subscription

Martin LeBlanc avatar
Written by Martin LeBlanc
Updated over a week ago

This article explains what happens with your subscription in case your card stops working and we are not able to successfully charge it. 

Why credit cards fail

Credit cards (or debit, for that matter), can sometimes fail. Some reasons for this could be that the card has expired, there are insufficient funds, or your bank blocked the payment because it was either not recognised or judged unsafe. It could be that the bank consider the payment to Iconfinder to fall outside of your normal spending habits. Or it could be that your bank does not allow automatic payments in USD, or that your bank blocks Iconfinder because it is not a local company in your country (Iconfinder is based in Denmark - address and VAT number are found on our About page). 

To understand this issue better, we have written a separate article that contains more information on the Reasons why credit card payments fail.

What happens with the subscription

Monthly subscriptions are renewed every 30 days (for annual subscriptions, the renewals happen every 12 months). When the time to renew the subscription comes, we try to bill the card that you have saved on your Iconfinder Payment settings

If the card is billed correctly, your subscription is successfully renewed. However, if the payment fails, what will happen with your subscription? 

When we are not able to bill your card on the day your subscription is due to renew, we keep trying to bill your card at a later time. Despite of the unpaid period, our subscription is still functional and your credits get refilled as usually.  You can continue downloading graphics and using the subscription normally. 

How often do we retry billing your card? 

We first try on the first day of the new subscription month. If the card fails, we try again after 2 days. If this try also fails, we try again the next Friday or Monday. If the 3rd attempt also fails, we keep trying to bill your card once per week until day 30 of the subscription period. In the meantime, if the card did not work for 14 days, we send you an email about it, where we ask you to add a new credit card. 

If 30 days have passed and we could not renew your subscription

If we could not charge you for the entire subscription period, we put your subscription on pause. Having a paused subscription means that you cannot download graphics until you enter a new credit card and we bill you for the missing payment. Read more about Paused subscriptions

What happens when you enter a new credit card

If you enter a new card within the 30 days from the failed payment (while your subscription is still functional), we will charge your card for that subscription period. If you have not used any of the credits you have received, they will roll over for the next months.

If your subscription is paused (meaning that we could not bill in within 30 days) and you enter a new card, we will bill you for the unpaid period plus the new period (corresponding to the following 30 days). In other words, the card will be billed for the past unpaid period and the new period. All credits that are unused are rolled over for future months. 

What happens if you cancel your subscription

It depends on whether you have used your credits during the unpaid subscription period. 

If you have not used any credits

If you cancel when you have not used any credits, the new credits will be removed from your account and we will not bill you for the unpaid month. For example, if you were on the Pro Standard plan and have not used any of the 50 credits, they will be removed from your account when you cancel.

If you have used credits

If you cancel after you have used some credits, you will still need to pay for the unpaid period that you have used. We will continue trying to bill your card during one month for the price of the unpaid period. 

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