Migrating recurring subscriptions: what you need to know

For any company that has recurring revenue,  migrating payments infrastructure across processors can be stressful. The stakes are high: customer churn, revenue leakage, and regulatory headaches can all derail growth. 

Approaching a payments migration: a practical guide

Step 1: Define the scope and strategy

Start by mapping the business drivers behind your migration. Are you switching providers to reduce costs, expand globally, or enable new payment methods? Clearly documenting your objectives will guide technical and commercial tradeoffs.

At this stage, you should also define your migration cohorts, or the groups of customers, payment methods, or merchants that you’ll migrate in phases. Cohorts can be based on:

• Merchant segments (e.g., enterprise vs. SMB)
  
• Geography (domestic vs. international accounts)
  
• Card quality (recently active vs. dormant or expired)
  
• Risk profile (low-risk cards and known good traffic first to support MID warming)

Starting with the “best” cohorts – clean, active, domestic cards and merchants – helps establish healthy authorization rates and builds confidence before expanding to more complex segments.

Step 2: Build your integration

We recommend building and testing your new integration before you start migration activities. This can take between 4-8 weeks, depending on the complexity. This gives you time to configure and test both payments and billing flows before importing historical data.

When building for billing, consider:

• Products and prices: recreate your catalog in Stripe, including subscription plans, one-time charges, discounts, and trial periods
  
• Coupons and promotions: if you use coupons or special offers, re-establish them in the new system – these won’t migrate automatically
  
• Tax setup: ensure tax logic is aligned (e.g., Stripe Tax requires verified customer addresses for correct jurisdictional calculations)
  
• Default payment methods: every customer must have a default payment method attached to support subscription schedules
  
• Edge cases: if customers have multiple payment methods, decide how to assign defaults and whether to enforce recollection for outliers
  
• Limitations: existing invoices, events, and logs cannot be migrated – only future subscription schedules. Plan for this gap in your reporting

Finally, test billing flows before you import subscriptions:

• Trial conversions
  
• Upgrades/downgrades
  
• Prorations
  
• Metered billing usage reporting

A strong billing setup ensures that once subscriptions are migrated, renewals process smoothly and customers don’t experience disruptions.

Step 3: Plan the migration

On the technical side, you’ll work with your incumbent processor and the new provider to securely export encrypted payment details (cards, ACH, metadata). Expect 2–3 weeks depending on processor responsiveness and data quality.

On the business side, initiating a migration often requires contract negotiations with your current provider. Termination clauses, data access fees, and minimum commitments can all affect timing. Because of this, it’s best to start this step early, but also balance it with the sensitivity of notifying a vendor that you intend to leave. Too much lead time can create friction in your current relationship, while waiting too long can compress your migration timeline. Careful planning, aligned with legal and procurement teams, is key.

Step 4: Execute the migration

This is where planning becomes action. Execution typically takes 5–15 days, depending on dataset size and complexity.

Key activities include:

• Secure data transfer: Your current PSP sends encrypted customer and payment data (PANs, expiration, ACH details) to Stripe’s migrations team or your new provider. Supplementary metadata files can be merged to preserve IDs and reporting continuity.
  
• Validation checks: Automated validation runs on the incoming files — catching invalid card numbers (Luhn failures), malformed expirations, duplicates, and expired cards. You’ll receive a summary of what passed, failed, or was skipped.
  
• Mapping: The provider generates a mapping file (CSV/JSON) linking old customer IDs and payment method tokens to new ones. This file is crucial for reconciliation and should be stored securely.
  
• Subscriptions recreation: For recurring billing, subscriptions are re-created in the new system using migrated customers and default payment methods. Old subscriptions must then be canceled to avoid double billing.
  
• Fallback & retries: Expect some declines post-migration (especially with new MIDs). Strategies like Smart Retries, Card Account Updater, and sending “best” card cohorts first help minimize disruption
  
• Parallel/dual processing (optional): Some platforms choose a staged cutover — processing new transactions with the new PSP while retrying declines or legacy transactions with the incumbent PSP as backup. This lowers risk but requires orchestration.

The execution phase is also when real-time monitoring matters most. Watch authorization rates, decline codes, and reconciliation across systems to ensure nothing slips.

Key watchouts

Even the most carefully planned migration can run into pitfalls. Beyond the mechanics of moving data, you’ll need to anticipate the customer, regulatory, and operational risks that can quietly erode trust and revenue if left unmanaged.

Churn risk

Migration creates friction. Customers may drop off if they need to re-enter credentials or encounter checkout changes. Mitigate by communicating early, providing incentives, and using tokenization tools where possible.

Recollection of payment methods

Some payment data (e.g., digital wallets like Apple Pay) can’t be migrated due to tokenization limits. Plan for secure recollection campaigns and expect some manual re-entry.

MID warming

A new Merchant ID (MID) may experience lower initial authorization rates because issuers see you as a “new” merchant. To warm up:

• Start with your best cohorts (recent, validated, domestic).
  
• Enable Stripe optimizations like Network Tokens, Card Account Updater (CAU), and Adaptive Acceptance.
  
• Avoid retrying “bad” decline codes aggressively.

Subscription complexities

Subscriptions need careful mapping:

• Pre-paid vs. post-paid cases require different cut-off and start-date strategies.
  
• Default payment methods must be set for every customer.
  
• Invoices, events, and historical logs cannot be migrated; only future subscription schedules can be moved.

Refunds

Refunds for transactions processed with your old PSP may require keeping that account active for 6+ months. Stripe offers “unlinked refunds” for edge cases

How Yeeld can help 

At Yeeld, we’ve guided many types of businesses through migrations of every shape and size, from simple customer and payment method transfers to complex subscription scenarios. We can help you:

• Design your migration strategy: Cohorting, fallback options, MID warming, and communication planning.
  
• Execute easily: assist you with coordinating with your processors, and ensuring billing and payment flows are production-ready.
  
• Optimize post-migration: Implementing Stripe tools and Yeeld surcharging solutions to recover fees and improve authorization rates.

Whether you’re moving for cost, capability, or to stay regulation-ready, Yeeld can help you succeed. Contact us to learn more.