NMI Recurring Billing & Subscriptions

NMI Recurring Billing is the subscription management engine built into the NMI payment gateway. It runs on top of the NMI Customer Vault — payment method tokens that let you charge the same card on a recurring schedule without re-entering card details.

Subscription plans can be monthly, quarterly, annual, or custom intervals. Each plan supports trial periods, sign-up fees, prorations, and configurable retry logic when a payment fails. Plans assign to vaulted customers, then charge automatically on the schedule until cancelled.

Used by SaaS companies, gym/fitness merchants, subscription boxes, professional services on retainer, and any merchant with repeat-billing relationships.

The NMI Customer Vault stores payment method tokens — not raw card numbers — in a PCI-compliant environment managed by NMI. When you charge a vaulted customer, you reference the vault ID instead of card details.

This means: card numbers never sit in your merchant system, your PCI scope is dramatically reduced, customers don't re-enter cards for each charge, and you can update card details (when a card expires) without losing the subscription.

The vault also stores ACH/eCheck banking details for non-card recurring relationships.

NMI Recurring Billing supports the billing patterns most SaaS and subscription merchants need:

Trial periods: 7-day, 14-day, 30-day, or custom — no charge during trial, automatic first charge at trial end.

Prorations: When a subscriber upgrades mid-cycle, NMI calculates the prorated charge for the remaining cycle time at the higher tier.

Sign-up fees: One-time charge at subscription creation, separate from the recurring amount.

Custom billing dates: Bill all customers on the 1st of the month, or bill on the anniversary date of each customer's sign-up.

When a recurring charge fails (expired card, insufficient funds, fraud flag), NMI runs configurable dunning logic instead of cancelling the subscription immediately.

Retry schedule: By default, NMI retries failed payments at 3, 5, and 7 days. Configurable per merchant.

Dunning emails: Optional email notifications to the customer at each retry. Customers can update card details via a hosted page.

Final action: After all retries fail, the subscription is paused or cancelled (configurable). A webhook fires so your system can update user access.

Smart retry timing (avoiding weekends, retrying after known payday dates) recovers 15-30% of failed payments that would otherwise churn.

Recurring Billing emits webhooks at every meaningful event so your SaaS platform stays in sync without polling:

subscription.created — new subscription enrolled
subscription.charged — successful recurring charge
subscription.failed — charge failed, retry pending
subscription.cancelled — final cancellation (after dunning or manual cancel)
subscription.updated — plan change, card update, status change

Configure webhook endpoints per merchant in the Merchant Central admin. NMI signs webhook payloads with HMAC-SHA256 so your endpoint can verify authenticity.

NMI and Stripe both offer subscription billing, but differ in distribution model and pricing:

Stripe Billing — direct-to-merchant. Stripe sets a flat 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction plus 0.5-0.8% for Billing on top. Public pricing, sign up directly.

NMI Recurring Billing — distributed through ISO/SaaS partners. Pricing is wholesale (typically much lower interchange-plus rates) but you sign through a reseller. NMI itself doesn't do direct retail.

For SaaS platforms embedding payments, NMI is typically chosen for the white-label/embedded model and lower wholesale economics. Stripe is typically chosen for direct-merchant simplicity.