Every failed payment has a window during which recovery is plausible, and the window's shape depends on the failure. Insufficient funds stays plausible for weeks — accounts refill on cycles, and a patient schedule aligned to those cycles keeps finding new doors. An expired card's window is not about time at all; it closes the moment the customer decides the subscription is not worth a two-minute update, which is why the ask must arrive while the failure is still news.
Designing to the window changes the math of effort. Attempts are finite — ours cap at eight — but their placement matters more than their count: spread across the days the failure family actually heals, not stacked in the first forty-eight hours when hope feels highest and success rates are not. A ninety-day backfill at connect time exists for the same reason: failures that happened before the tool arrived are still inside somebody's window.
Swipe Again draws the window per decline family and lets the recovery flow close quietly when it ends — no zombie retries against payments whose moment has passed. Knowing when a save is still possible is the skill. Knowing when it is not is the discipline that keeps the attempts you do make worth answering.
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