What happens if a payment fails

↗See this in Fincanva — Settings, on the Billing page, under Payment method

Before you start

No prerequisites. The notice appears on its own when a payment Fincanva expected has not been collected, and it disappears on its own once the payment clears or the subscription ends — there is nothing to switch on, and no way to dismiss it.

What the notice on every page means

It means a payment Fincanva expected has not been collected — and its wording tells you which of two different situations you are in. It appears as a warning strip above whatever page you are on, everywhere in the app.

• A renewal was refused. "A payment for your subscription didn't go through. Update your payment method to keep your access." The payment method on file was declined — commonly an expired card, a block by the bank, or insufficient funds.
• A first payment has not arrived yet. "We haven't received your first subscription payment yet. Check your payment method if nothing arrives." Nothing has necessarily gone wrong here: a payment method that settles over several days can leave a brand-new subscription uncollected while it completes.

Neither case changes the plan you are on. On the billing page the card's headline still names that plan — Advanced plan, or whichever one you hold — and the payment is described beside it: a refused renewal under Payment failed, a first payment that has not arrived yet under Payment pending.

What you can still use while this is happening

Everything your plan covers, exactly as before. A failed payment changes what Fincanva says, not what you can do: your strategies still run, your screeners still return matches, your live portfolios still update. The billing page states the same thing under Payment failed — "You keep Advanced while we retry."

This is deliberate. The first refused charge is not a decision to stop serving you, and treating it as one would cut off someone whose card simply expired.

Steps

1. Select Update payment method. The button sits on the notice strip itself, and again on Settings → Billing, under Payment method.
2. Wait while the button reads "Opening payment settings…". Fincanva does not handle card details itself — it hands you to Stripe, the payment provider that holds them.
3. Add or replace the payment method in the Stripe page that opens, and confirm it there. If your bank asks for an extra confirmation, complete it in the same place.
4. Return to Fincanva.

What you should see

The notice strip is gone from every page, and the billing page no longer shows Payment failed beside your plan. Nothing else has to be re-done: the state is read live from Stripe on each page you open, so it reflects the payment as soon as the payment provider accepts it.

How long do I have before this becomes a problem?

Fincanva does not set that deadline, and deliberately does not publish one. The retry schedule belongs to Stripe: it decides how many times to re-attempt the charge, how far apart, and when to give up. Any countdown shown here would be a number Fincanva does not control and could not keep true.

What you can rely on is the notice itself. It stays for exactly as long as the payment is uncollected, and it disappears by itself the moment that changes — in either direction.

What happens if the payment never goes through

Your subscription ends, and paid access ends with it. The billing page states the consequence in advance, under Payment failed: "Update your payment method — if the retries don't go through, the plan ends."

Nothing you have built is deleted. Strategies, screeners, portfolios and their results all remain. What changes is what a plan covers: work beyond the reach of your current plan stops running rather than disappearing, and trying to run it is refused in words that name the plan — This strategy is outside your {currentPlan} plan, so it cannot run. Subscribing again restores the access; it does not have to restore the work, because the work was never removed.

Removing an account and its contents is a separate, deliberate action you take yourself — see account deletion. A failed payment never triggers it.

Fincanva does not tell you which plan to be on, and this page is not a recommendation to subscribe — see Is this financial advice?.

What does the plan card show once the subscription has ended?

It stops naming the plan you held. Once access actually stops, the plan card on Settings → Billing reads the headline Free — the same headline shown to an account that never subscribed — and the line under the plan name reads "No active subscription." instead of a price. The step indicator above it reads Step 0 of 3: Free is not missing from Fincanva's plan scale, it sits on it unheld — see plan step for what the scale counts.

A dated row still names what happened, so the change is not silent. It reads Your {plan} plan ended on {date}, naming the plan you held and the day it ended, or, when the subscription closed because the retries described above ran out rather than because you cancelled it, Your {plan} plan ended — the payment was never collected. Either sentence is followed by the same line: "Everything you built is still here. Subscribing again restores access to it." The action beneath depends on which of the two endings you are in: after a cancellation it reads Choose a plan and opens the same plan picker as a first subscription, while a subscription that ended because the retries ran out reads Update payment method instead — that ending is a payment that never arrived, so the card offers the payment page rather than the plan picker.

Common problems

The strip is still there after I updated my card

Open a page again. The billing state is read fresh each time a page loads, so the strip clears on the next load rather than the instant the Stripe page closes. If it persists, the new method has not been accepted yet — the Stripe page shows the payment's own status.

"Couldn't open the payment portal. Try again."

The handover to Stripe did not complete. Select Update payment method again; the same button on Settings → Billing opens the same place if the notice strip's one keeps failing.

I never subscribed, and I'm seeing a payment notice

The notice only appears for an account with a subscription whose payment is uncollected. If you are on the free plan you will not see it — check which account you are signed in with on Settings.