Braintree Account Updater and expiring cards

When a customer’s card expires or is replaced, every subscription on the old card is a failed payment waiting to happen. Braintree offers two services that fetch new card details from the networks without asking the customer: Account Updater and network tokens. Neither covers every card, so you still need a way to reach the customers they miss.

This guide explains how each service works, the details that matter for subscriptions, and a plan for the rest. It sticks to Braintree’s own documentation: Account Updater, the Account Updater webhook, Expiring Cards report, Network tokens overview, How network tokens work, Updating vault records and Recurring billing advanced settings (all accessed November 2026). For the general picture across providers, see network tokens and card account updaters and expiring cards.

Account Updater

What it does

According to Braintree’s Account Updater guide, Account Updater automatically requests updates for vaulted payment methods when a customer’s card expires or is replaced, to help avoid failed transactions. It works through the card networks’ updater programs, so an update only arrives if the issuing bank participates.

Who can use it

Account Updater is not on by default. Braintree says most Braintree Direct merchants domiciled in the US, or transacting primarily with US customers, can enable it, and asks others to contact them. Fees are set in your agreement: Braintree’s disbursement fee report lists Account Updater among the product fees billed as event fees. Check your contract for the price.

What it does not cover

Prepaid cards are not supported.
Cards used through Apple Pay or Google Pay are not supported.
Card brands: Braintree’s developer guide lists Visa, Mastercard and Discover, while its marketing page also names American Express. The two sources disagree on Amex; confirm with Braintree for your account.

When cards are checked

After an initial batch, Braintree sends update requests on a rolling basis. The guide describes several triggers, including:

a recurring payment due within two weeks;
a decline on the card, with one documented exception that matters for subscriptions: a card on a monthly subscription that charged successfully 30 days earlier is not added to a batch the first time it is declined.

That exception means the first failed monthly renewal on a replaced card may not trigger an update by itself. Your retries and customer emails need to cover it.

Next Day Card Refresh

Braintree also describes Next Day Card Refresh, which attempts to update vaulted cards after an authorization is declined with certain decline codes. It only helps if something retries the payment afterwards, either Braintree’s recurring billing retries or your own logic. If your retry settings are off, the refreshed card sits unused until the next billing cycle. Check them in Account Settings, Recurring Billing, Options (advanced settings).

Seeing what changed

You can review updates in the Control Panel, in a generated report, or through the Account Updater daily report webhook. Per the webhook reference:

it is only available to merchants using Account Updater;
it fires once a day with the payment methods updated in the last 24 hours, and does not fire if there were none;
the payload contains a report date and a report URL, and the link expires after one week.

Download and store the report as soon as it arrives. If a card was updated, you no longer need to email that customer about it.

Network tokens

Network tokens are a separate Braintree service. According to the network tokens overview and how they work:

The card network passes issuer updates (reissue, theft, loss, and changes such as an approaching expiry) to Braintree, which updates the card details in your vault.
There is no integration change needed to start using them.
They are available to merchants in the United States and select regions in North America, South America and Europe processing full stack with Braintree.
A token may not always be used for a given transaction.

Braintree also documents that merchant-initiated recurring charges carry extra parameters (such as the transaction source and the previous network transaction ID) when you run recurring payments outside Braintree’s own recurring billing. If you use Braintree subscriptions, check with Braintree how tokens apply to your setup.

	Account Updater	Network tokens
How it updates	Requests to network updater programs, in batches and on triggers	Lifecycle updates from the network to the token
Setup	Must be enabled; eligibility mainly US	No integration change; regional availability
Gaps	Prepaid, Apple Pay, Google Pay; non-participating issuers	Token not always used

The Expiring Cards report

For cards neither service will catch, Braintree’s Control Panel has an Expiring Cards report: go to Reports, find the Vault section, and run Expiring Cards. You can filter by a custom date range or view all expired cards. Run it monthly for the month ahead.

The subscription trap: new cards do not move subscriptions

Braintree’s vault documentation points out that adding a new payment method to a customer’s vault does not update their existing subscriptions. If a customer adds a new card through your app, you must also update each subscription to use the new payment method, then retry any past due charge with Subscription: Retry Charge. Forgetting this step is a common reason a customer “updated their card” and still churned.

A plan for expiring cards on Braintree

Enable Account Updater if you are eligible, and network tokens where available.
Turn on automatic retries for recurring billing so Next Day Card Refresh has something to act on.
Store the daily Account Updater report and mark updated cards in your system.
Run the Expiring Cards report monthly for cards expiring next month.
Email customers whose cards were not updated, 30 days and again about 7 days before expiry, with one link to a card update page.
On the update page, save the new card, switch every subscription to it, and retry any past due charge.
Cover the first failed monthly renewal. Because a monthly subscription card is not batched on its first decline, send a recovery email right away rather than waiting for the updater.
Exclude unsupported cards (prepaid, Apple Pay, Google Pay) from any assumption that the updater will handle them.

Doing this with NoChurn

Account Updater, network tokens and the charge itself stay with Braintree. NoChurn reads the payment method type, brand, last four digits and expiry from Braintree and adds AI-written emails that you review before they go out, with a hosted page where the customer updates the payment method. When a renewal still fails, recovery emails follow alongside Braintree’s subscription retries. See NoChurn + Braintree.