CARD_DECLINED

What triggered it

Stripe tried to charge your saved card and the issuing bank declined. Common bank-side reasons:

• Insufficient funds — most common one.
• Card expired or replaced — your bank issued a new card and didn’t auto-update.
• International fraud rules — some banks block recurring charges from US-based merchants by default for international cards.
• Recurring billing disabled — the card-holder explicitly disabled recurring on the card.
• CVV / address mismatch — saved card details no longer match what’s on file at the bank.

Your plan is on hold, not cancelled

Stripe gives us 3 retry attempts over ~3 weeks before fully cancelling. Until then, your plan is on hold and you have time to fix the card. Existing bots stay online through the end of your prepaid window.

What to try

1. Update your card. Open billing → Update payment method. Stripe will retry the charge immediately on the new card.

2. Try a different payment method. Stripe accepts most major cards plus Apple Pay, Google Pay, and (in select regions) bank debit. If one card keeps declining, switch.

3. Call your bank. If the card should work, call the number on the back. Banks often have “international merchant” or “subscription” toggles you can enable in 30 seconds.

4. Check for typos. A wrong ZIP/postal code on a US card declines silently at most issuers. Edit and resubmit.

Update payment method

What happens if I don’t fix it?

Stripe retries the charge on day 3, day 5, and day 7 after the first decline. After the third failure:

• Your subscription auto-cancels.
• Your bots stop at the end of the current prepaid window.
• Your projects, code, and deploy state are kept — sign in within 30 days and re-subscribe to bring everything back online.

After 30 days of full cancellation, projects move to cold storage (still recoverable, just slower to restore).

When to contact support

If your card is good and still being declined:

• Email support@vibecord.dev with your account email and the decline code Stripe shows in the billing dashboard (e.g. card_declined, insufficient_funds, expired_card)
• Drop a note in Discord

We can’t override a bank decline (Stripe doesn’t allow that), but we can confirm what Stripe is reporting and help you debug the right side of the wall.