Credit card transaction failures question...

[glidedesign]

I would like to know if a notification goes out the the customer or the admin if an automatically billed card (setup through authorize.net) and s2member fails?

Basically, I have a clients site that has a monthly subscription fee and we are curious what happens if someone's credit card expires or they have a maxed out card. What communication takes place?

[Cristián Lávaque]

s2Member doesn't send out emails in those cases yet. You could, though, set something up using the Notifications API and a custom script. I'm afraid that a failed attempt won't trigger a notification, though, only when the max number of failed attempts is reached will that happen, if I'm not mistaken. http://www.s2member.com/api-tracking-no ... ons-video/

[glidedesign]

Excellent, thanks for the quick response. Here is my follow up question:

Where are the max number of failed attempts and notification settings for max failed attempts managed? Is this something that I can manage in authorize.net or s2member?

[Cristián Lávaque]

I don't really know. I'll ask Jason.

[glidedesign]

Confirmed.
I appreciate the quick answers!

[Jason Caldwell]

Thanks for the excellent question.

I would like to know if a notification goes out the the customer or the admin if an automatically billed card (setup through authorize.net) and s2member fails?

Basically, I have a clients site that has a monthly subscription fee and we are curious what happens if someone's credit card expires or they have a maxed out card. What communication takes place?

Yea, the Authorize.Net API is a bit weak in this regard. Unlike PayPal Pro, the Authorize.Net API does NOT make it possible for s2Member to configure the max failed payments. The way Authorize.Net handles this, is via manual intervention. As the site owner, you can configure email notifications from inside your Authorize.Net account. When a payment fails, the site owner can be notified via email.

As the site owner, you make a decision about whether or not to suspend and/or terminate their paid subscription. If the site owner suspends or terminates the subscription, s2Member will eventually pull this information through a status query to the Authorize.NET ARB service ( can take up to 24 hours, but usually within an hour ), where s2Member will then demote and/or delete the Member's account, based on your configuration of s2Member's EOT behavior.

So, to summarize, s2Member integrates with Authorize.Net's ARB, AIM, Silent Post, and also the ARB status APIs. When a subscription payment fails, s2Member is notified by Authorize.Net through a Silent Post ( aka: IPN / Instant Payment Notification ). s2Member ignores failed payments, and instead waits until the subscription has been formally suspended and/or terminated by the site owner. In other words, s2Member makes no assumptions and/or configurations about the maximum number of failed payments ( yet, this may come in a future release though ). For now, s2Member expects that the site owner will make this decision.

[glidedesign]

This is a great answer.
Thanks for the follow-up and support!

[Jason Caldwell]

Very welcome.