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Feature requirements

🔐 Rainforest must enable the platform to access this feature

💲 Billing fees associated to this feature

Card account updater (CAU) is a process that Rainforest runs with the card networks to keep the card information on stored payment methods up-to-date. This can be useful when the card expires or was replaced and the user received a new card number. CAU is most helpful for recurring payments or subscriptions, utilizing a stored payment method to process payments. Updating the card information can help reduce decline rates due to expired or replaced cards.

How does CAU work?

CAU is a batched process that runs once a week on Thursdays. The card networks can take up to 5 business days to respond. Rainforest will update the payment methods in real-time as the card networks respond.

Payment methods to update

Rainforest can configure all merchants on your platform to automatically have CAU enabled or only enable on specific merchants. All card payment methods will be submitted to the card networks to request for updated information if the following criteria is met:

• The payment method's Billable Merchant has CAU enabled
• The payment method's status is Active
• The payment method does not have CAU disabled

Replaced payment methods

If a card is updated, Rainforest will replace the current payment method with a new payment method, using the concept of a replaced payment method. Replaced payment methods are utilized for both CAU and ACH Notification of Change (NOC).

You can create payins from the original (replaced) payment method or the new (linked) payment method. Rainforest will automatically use the new payment method regardless of which payment method was passed into the request.

CAU disabled

It's possible for the card networks to notify Rainforest that CAU cannot be run on a specific card. In this case, Rainforest will mark this payment method with "Replacement Disabled" indicators in the API on the payment method resource:

{
    "payment_method_id": "mtd_2xVmxl5cKnXtshQaHKA8vZUfGvz",
    // ...
+   "replacement_disabled_at": "2025-05-22T19:41:27.220366Z",
+   "replacement_disabled_reason_code": "D02",
+   "replacement_disabled_reason_desc": "Issuer closed the cardholder's account"
}

See the replacement disabled reason codes guide for all reasons replacing a payment method could be disabled.

Limitations

Card account updater only runs on Discover, Mastercard, and Visa cards. As of today, American Express cards cannot be updated through CAU.

Deactivate payment methods

Rainforest will run all Active payment methods, that do not have replacement disabled, through the CAU process. If there are payment methods that you never intend to use again via the payin from stored payment method flow, then it is highly encouraged to deactivate these payment methods in the Rainforest ecosystem. CAU does incur billing fees and deactivating payment methods can reduce the number of unnecessary payment method updates.

CAU billing

Each payment method replaced or marked as disabled via the CAU process incurs a Card Account Updater fee. This fee can be passed onto the merchant via the merchant billing profile.

Rainforest utilizes the Billable Merchant ID on the payment method to know which merchant to bill for the payment method updates via CAU. The Billable Merchant ID can be updated to change who should incur the CAU fee.

In the merchant's daily funding deposit, an adjustment will be included for all card account updates the day before with an 11pm ET daily cutoff.

For example, the merchant's deposit on May 16, 2025 would include an adjustment for the card account updates between May 14th 11:00pm ET and May 15th 11:00pm ET.