Understand Pay In autopays

An autopay — commonly referred to as a subscription — is a scheduled recurring charge that runs for a customer. At each occurrence, Payabli charges the customer’s saved payment method automatically, with no manual action required. Autopays primarily use card and ACH, though digital wallets (Apple Pay and Google Pay) are also supported. Contact your account manager to enable paypoint-level wallet support. ACH is often preferred for high-value or B2B recurring billing because of lower per-transaction cost.

Schedule-driven and balance-driven autopays

Payabli supports two autopay types, each suited to a different billing model.

Schedule-driven autopays charge a fixed amount on a recurring interval you choose: weekly, every two weeks, monthly, quarterly, every six months, or annually. You anchor the schedule to a start date, and an end date is optional — a schedule-driven autopay runs until you cancel it. A customer can have many schedule-driven autopays active at once, which is useful when you bill separate services at different rates for the same account.

Balance-driven autopays charge the customer’s current open balance at execution time instead of a fixed amount. If the balance is zero when the autopay runs, Payabli skips the cycle with no charge. Balance-driven autopays use fixed calendar positions only: the first, the fifteenth, or the last day of the month. They don’t support custom intervals or start dates. Only one balance-driven autopay can be active per customer at a time, and end dates don’t apply — they run until canceled.

Your organization sets and maintains the open balance via the Update customer endpoint. Payabli reads it at execution time but doesn’t change it.

Choosing a type

Schedule-driven autopays work well for fixed recurring fees — SaaS subscriptions, service plans, installment billing, and any scenario where the charge amount is predictable. Balance-driven autopays suit variable billing, where the amount owed changes cycle-to-cycle. HOA dues and property assessments are common examples — fees and credits can shift the balance between billing dates.

How autopays execute

All autopays execute overnight between 2:30 AM and 3:30 AM ET on their scheduled date. The time shown in the Next Autopay field is always midnight; only the date is meaningful. ACH autopays are subject to banking calendar rules. For details on how weekends and federal holidays affect ACH settlement timing, see ACH payment cycle.

Autopays can be paused, resumed, or canceled (deleted) at any time.

Related resources

See these related resources to help you get the most out of Payabli.