The Payment Repeats. The Customer Context Shouldn't Reset.

Recurring payments are customer payment events that repeat according to a relevant recurring schedule or arrangement. In Salesforce with Bonza, the arrangement establishes the context, the current payment is managed through a configured gateway, status and history are recorded, the next payment and upcoming activity are anticipated, exceptions go to a person, and the cycle continues. The payment repeats; the customer context does not reset each time.

A one-time payment runs payment need → payment → status, with no inherent repeating schedule. A recurring payment runs schedule or arrangement → payment → status → next payment, and loops. A customer relationship can contain more than one payment model, and Bonza keeps both inside one payment lifecycle without either becoming the other.

They are not the same thing, and no. Recurring payment management focuses on repeating payment events and their status. Subscription billing may also include a product catalog, plans, pricing, usage, metering, proration, contract changes, entitlements, complex billing rules and revenue recognition — none of which is attributed to Bonza. Bonza can support recurring payment management without needing to replace a subscription billing platform, and the two categories can be complementary.

Yes. The next expected payment sits alongside the current payment rather than being derived separately, and Payment Forecasting can provide forward visibility into relevant expected recurring payment activity across the next period. Expected payment activity should not be interpreted as guaranteed collection, and this is not revenue, ARR, MRR, treasury, corporate cash-flow or bank-balance forecasting.

Yes, as three distinct operational states rather than one unpaid figure. A recurring arrangement can keep collecting future cycles on time while one amount stays overdue, and both facts remain visible on the same customer. There is no automatic customer chasing, dunning, SMS, email reminders, late fees, promise-to-pay, legal collections or autonomous collection agents.

Yes, as an attention signal. Where a relevant payment method approaches expiry before expected future payment activity, that ordering can be surfaced — this is the one exception path that opens while the current payment is perfectly healthy. It does not say the payment will fail, and there is no automatic card updater, automatic customer outreach, automatic remediation or guaranteed failure prediction.

Yes to both. A refund stays attached to the payment it came from, so the collected figure remains explainable rather than simply lower, and the recurring arrangement itself is unaffected. Customer credit is recorded and managed within Bonza Payments and is available for relevant future payment use where supported. It is never a wallet, stored cash, a cash account, or customer funds held by Bonza.

No. Automatic retries are not claimed, and neither is automatic retry through another gateway. A payment event that does not complete becomes an operational state a person can see — outstanding, then due, then overdue as the timing changes — and what happens next is a human decision rather than an automated sequence.

Yes. Bonza sits above the gateway layer with a relevant default configured and another configured gateway selectable where appropriate. Configured payment gateways perform relevant underlying payment processing, while Bonza manages the wider Salesforce-native payment lifecycle. There is no smart routing, automatic failover, automatic gateway switching, least-cost routing, authorisation optimisation, token portability, universal gateway compatibility or gateway-independent stored credentials.

No. The gateway processes the transaction; Bonza manages the payment context around it. Bonza is not a payment gateway, an acquirer, a bank or a core banking system, and it does not hold customer funds.

Where a business already uses Experience Cloud for customer-facing journeys, Bonza can support relevant connected payment experiences within that environment, with payment activity flowing back to Bonza and Salesforce. Experience Cloud does not process the payment, and Bonza does not provide the entire portal.

No. Bonza manages the customer payment lifecycle, not the general ledger or the accounting close. It is not an ERP, accounting software, treasury software, a revenue-recognition system or CPQ, and it does not perform bank, settlement or accounting reconciliation.