Smart dunning on Pix: a guide to the 4 overdue bands

Smart dunning (cobrança inteligente) is not a new payment method. It is the schedule that defines when to charge again, how many times to retry and when to stop, on rails that already exist, such as Pix Automático. For anyone selling subscriptions in Brazil, it changes one thing only: the retry policy that the receiver itself establishes.

Every operation that sells subscriptions in Brazil has the same spreadsheet, and that is where smart dunning begins. It lists the month's invoices, one line per overdue recurring charge, and it does not say how many of those lines nobody decided to retry. The calculation that separates a customer without money from a charge without a policy comes out of the reader's own base. The overnight debit did not settle, and the next attempt depends on someone opening the file on Monday.

The thesis is narrow and verifiable. Banco Central (Brazilian Central Bank) sets the ceiling for Pix Automático retries, and the policy inside it belongs to the receiver: at most three different dates, within seven calendar days counted from the original date (Banco Central, Guia Pix Automático v1.3, 19/08/2026). The text delivers that schedule in four overdue bands, what to require from the PSP and the denominator of the calculation.

What smart dunning is, and what it is not

Smart dunning is the market name for recurring collection that decides on its own when to try again. It is not a rail: the rail is Pix, and regulated recurring collection is Pix Automático. The smart layer is the policy that chooses the retry and the moment to stop. The mandatory notice belongs to the rail.

The confusion starts in the vocabulary. A rail is the infrastructure that moves the money, in Brazil Pix, under Banco Central rules. An instrument is the product that uses the rail: Pix Automático debits the recurring charge with prior authorization. A layer is the receiver's policy, written into the contract. When the charge does not come in, the receiver answers for it: the rail only delivers or refuses settlement.

The label circulating in proposals is smart pix, in lowercase: it describes the same layer and inherits the same problem. The smart layer is not a product of the Pix arrangement: what Banco Central regulates, in Pix Automático, is the instrument, and the table below separates layer from instrument.

Non-settlement, non-scheduling and cancellation by the receiver are permanent notifications from the rail. The non-settlement one, for insufficient funds or insufficient limit, arrives at the end of the window, at 8h, and again after 21h. The layer writes the receiver's message on top of it, and duplicating the payer PSP's notice is a reading error (Banco Central, Guia Pix Automático v1.3, 19/08/2026).

The four parts of a recurring charge in Brazil

Every recurring charge depends on four parts: the recurrence, which sets periodicity and amount; the authorization, given by the payer to their PSP; the payment instruction, sent by the receiver on each cycle; and the settlement, which happens in the overnight window (Banco Central, Guia Pix Automático v1.3, 19/08/2026).

Settlement runs on the secondary channel, in the 0h to 8h window of the scheduled date. The authorization is given once, in the payer's PSP app, and holds until it is cancelled or until the recurrence's end date.

Smart dunning acts on the third part, and only on it.

The receiver must have a CNPJ. The offer is mandatory for PSPs on the payer side, with an exception for legal entity accounts, and optional on the receiver side: the rule does not oblige the receiver nor the merchant to accept the product.

The payer sets a maximum amount per authorization, and the receiver's floor limits that maximum, not the amount of a charge. The maximum bites on every payment: the payer PSP checks at scheduling and refuses the instruction above the maximum. The charge does not become a settlement failure and does not consume a date from the ceiling, and the remedy is to ask the payer to change the maximum. The payer also decides whether the debit uses the pre-approved credit line of their account, and there is a per-account and per-day limit for individuals (Banco Central, Guia Pix Automático v1.3, 19/08/2026).

The recurrence itself is covered in the piece on SaaS recurring billing on Pix Automático; this cut starts at the failure.

The retry ceiling that Banco Central sets

Banco Central sets the ceiling for Pix Automático retries, and the policy inside it is defined exclusively by the receiver. After the due date, the recurrence can retry only on at most three different dates, within seven calendar days (Banco Central, Guia Pix Automático v1.3, 19/08/2026).

The ceiling has two floors, and confusing them is the most common mistake. The first is the same day. When the payment does not settle for insufficient funds, insufficient limit or operational failure, the payer PSP makes at least one settlement retry that day, mandatorily between 18h and 21h, repeating as many times as it wants provided the last one falls inside that band. After 21h there is no further settlement attempt that day.

The second floor is post due date, and it is not automatic. The retry exists only if the recurrence provides for the possibility, the politicaRetentativa field in the Pix API, and providing for it falls exclusively to the receiver. The payer does not change the parameter.

Three conditions close the design. Retries must have a settlement date within seven calendar days of the original date, without passing the day before the next cycle, and they occur on at most three different dates, with the same amount as the original instruction. Each retry is a new instruction, commanded by the receiver until 23h59 of the previous day, and the payer cannot cancel the scheduling of a retry. Each one repeats the first-floor rule: a 0h to 8h window and, if it fails, an attempt between 18h and 21h.

The ceiling belongs to the rail, not to the market, and no smart dunning widens it.

The cost of delay per band: 0 to 7, 8 to 30, 31 to 60 and more than 60 days

The cost of a delay does not grow in a straight line: it changes in nature. Up to seven days, inside the ceiling's window (Banco Central, Guia Pix Automático v1.3, 19/08/2026), the cost is the attempt, the collection time and the risk of losing the authorization. After that, each band charges differently: deferred revenue, cancellation risk, reacquisition and loss.

The table is a reference, not a legal prescription: the bands are a cut of the monthly cycle.

In the first band, the rail works for the receiver: the intraday window is the cheap second chance, and the post due date ceiling covers what is left, if the policy was provided for before the first failure (Banco Central, Guia Pix Automático v1.3, 19/08/2026). It is the only band where waiting another day has backing. The decision is how to spend the three dates, the expensive budget: on days of possible balance, never on a dead authorization.

In the second band, the cycle has closed and no new date fits inside the seven calendar days. The decision is the next cycle, which the live authorization allows instructing: let it run on top of the unpaid charge, collect outside the rail, or stop instructing. What is measured is the revenue that came back outside it.

In the third band, the authorization may be alive and the charge may not. The rail no longer accepts a retry instruction for a due date outside the window, and what remains is to reassess the account: keep it, restructure it with a new date or a new recurrence, or stop. What is measured is an active authorization and a completed reacquisition.

Above 60 days, the schedule only records. There is no possible retry, there is no instruction to command: what exists is the decision to close or to ask the payer for a new authorization. What is measured is what remains stalled.

There are three losses, and only one stays out of the report. The piece on chargeback cost for ISVs deals with money that came in and went back; the charge that never came in does not appear as a reversal. It is another calculation. The third is born in the retry: the payer does not cancel the scheduling of a retry, they cancel the authorization, and the recurrence falls with it. Retrying is betting the recurrence to save one charge, and band 1 is measured by authorization.

Suspending the service for delay is the vendor's contractual decision, subject to the contract and applicable law. The cost of each band is operational and deferred revenue for the receiver, never an addition charged to the payer.

What to require from the PSP or the acquirer to retry for real

The regulated minimum is short and the same everywhere: the retry policy on the recurrence and the retry instruction. The rest changes from provider to provider and is what you demand by contract. The rail window, the cancellation by the payer and the MED refund are not the provider's.

1. Retry policy configurable per recurrence, not per account.
2. Retry instruction as a receiver operation in the API, not through support.
3. Return of each attempt with the reason for the refusal: the reason chooses the next date.

The first three make the retry automatic; the next three, auditable.

1. Report per overdue band: overdue, retried, open.
2. Non-scheduling event for the charge, with the identifier and the amount of the refused instruction, to act in the same cycle.
3. Cancellation with immediate effect: the cancelled authorization takes down the linked schedulings, except those of the same day.

Handling of the Pix Automático refund through MED is an obligation of the payer PSP towards the payer, in closed cases, and not a collection tool.

The reason chooses the date. A limit asks for a later day, because the day's limit is new, and the PSP has up to eight hours to answer the increase request, and the change only holds if it accepts. Balance is the case for the 18h to 21h window. An operational failure after sending asks for a new instruction on the same day, with a new E2EId; resending the same order, SPI does not accept it. A cancelled authorization is not a retry (Banco Central, Guia Pix Automático v1.3, 19/08/2026).

The rest is contract.

The expensive part of recurring collection is not the retry: it is invoicing and collecting. Nexforce Marketplace contracts global software and AI solutions for the Brazilian market and takes on the billing relationship in the country: local payment by Pix and boleto, invoice in reais, currency hedge, installments of up to 12 times on the Nexforce invoice and payment to the vendor upfront. The installments are on the Nexforce invoice and are not Pix. The currency hedge does not eliminate tax nor total cost.

The local layer handles invoicing, payment and reconciliation, and does not decide the collection policy. It does not define when the service is suspended.

How to know whether smart dunning paid for what it cost

The schedule is measured with an honest denominator, overdue charges in the period and not invoices issued, and with two ratios, always as a pair: attempts per recovered charge and days to recovery per recovered charge. Changing the denominator changes the answer.

Without a denominator, nothing holds.

Each overdue charge sits in one of three states: recovered, lost or open inside the ceiling. The authorization state runs separately, active or cancelled, because the same charge can be recovered with the authorization cancelled. Churn is counted per authorization: three overdue charges from one customer who cancels are one churn. Involuntary is the failure that the policy did not recover inside the ceiling, by absence or by exhaustion.

Voluntary churn is the payer who cancels because they wanted to, and the difference sits in the schedule. The payment acceptance rate measures the involuntary part: the charge that does not go through takes revenue down before acquisition.

The final trap is double counting. Each retry is a new instruction, and a system that lists instructions counts the same charge three times. A cohort by band solves it: the charge enters once, in the band where it went overdue, and the open ones appear marked.

Where smart dunning solves nothing

It does not cross the cycle. The retry respects the day before the start of the next cycle, and the charge that passed that point requires a vendor decision: another instrument, another calendar or closure. What decides is the contract, not the system.

It does not prevent the cancellation of the authorization, which is immediate. Authorization and recurrence fall together: once the payer cancels the authorization, the recurrence linked to it is also cancelled, and the reverse holds (Banco Central, Guia Pix Automático v1.3, 19/08/2026). And it does not define what a delinquent customer is.

The limits the schedule respects belong to the Brazilian arrangement, and it does not hold outside it: Colombian Pix and the local rail limit shows the same problem, and what Pix lacks in a business layer is that point seen from outside.

The agenda shows the limit. The 28th Plenary Meeting of the Pix Forum, of 26 March 2026, projected Cobrança Híbrida for June of that year, and the 2027 and beyond list carried offline contactless Pix, Pix as collateral and International Pix. Installments are on neither list.

Frequently asked questions

What is smart dunning? It is the market name for the layer that defines the sequence of attempts on a recurring charge: when to retry, how many times, when to stop. It is not a payment method nor a product of the arrangement: the rail is Pix, the instrument is Pix Automático, the layer is the receiver's policy.

How many retry dates does Pix Automático allow after the due date? At most three different dates, within seven calendar days counted from the original date, without passing the day before the next cycle (Banco Central, Guia Pix Automático v1.3, 19/08/2026). The same-day retry, between 18h and 21h, is another mechanism, with no ceiling of its own beyond the 21h cut.

Why did the charge fail if the customer has the balance? Because balance is not the only reason for a refusal. Settlement may not go through for exceeded limit or operational failure, and the per-account and per-day limit for individuals is observed on the scheduled date, independent of the other Pix limits (Banco Central, Guia Pix Automático v1.3, 19/08/2026).

What happens to the overdue subscription after the seven days? Nothing automatic, and nothing the schedule resolves on its own. The post due date ceiling ends in seven calendar days, and the rail does not carry the charge into the next cycle. From there it depends on the vendor: another instrument, another calendar or closure, inside the contractual policy it wrote.

How do you measure whether the collection schedule paid for what it cost? With an honest denominator, overdue charges in the period and not invoices issued, and two ratios over the recovered ones: attempts and days to recovery. Compare schedules as a pair, never by a single cost. Separate recovered, lost and open inside the ceiling, and count churn per authorization.

References and Further Reading

• Banco Central do Brasil, Guia de implementação do Pix Automático (Pix Automático implementation guide), v1.3, 19/08/2026: https://www.bcb.gov.br/content/estabilidadefinanceira/pix/automatico/guia_pix_automatico.pdf (accessed 27/10/2026).
• Banco Central do Brasil, Fórum Pix, 28th Plenary Meeting, 26/03/2026: https://www.bcb.gov.br/content/estabilidadefinanceira/pix/Forum_Pix_Plenaria/20260326-Forum_Pix.pdf (accessed 27/10/2026).

What to review before the next charge fails

The current schedule was written by inertia. Someone accepted the system default without reviewing the policy. The review starts at the denominator: count the charges that went overdue in the month, see how many were retried inside the ceiling of three different dates in seven calendar days and compare the schedule as executed with the one on paper. The difference is what the operation lost.