A saved payment method is a card or bank account Rhythm keeps on file for you, so you do not have to enter it every time you pay. You manage your own saved payment methods in the Portal. Association staff use a separate process when they help a contact with the same task.
When to Use This
Use this task to add a new card or bank account, review methods you already saved, remove one you no longer use, or save a method before you turn on automatic renewal for a membership or other recurring purchase.
Prerequisites
- You must be signed in to the Portal and linked to a contact record.
- You can manage only your own saved methods, not another contact’s.
Add, View, Change, or Remove a Saved Method
- Go to a Portal page that offers payment methods, such as Make a Payment, an invoice’s payment area, or a page where you update the payment method for a recurring purchase.
- To add a new method, choose the option to add a new card or bank account, then complete the entry form. Card and bank account entry stay separate, so adding a card shows only card fields, and adding a bank account shows only bank fields. Select the checkbox to save the method for later if you want to use it again. If you leave the box unchecked, or you are not signed in, Rhythm uses the method for that one payment only and does not save it.
- To use, change, or remove a method you already saved, find it in your list of saved cards and bank accounts on the same page.
Result
A method you save appears in your list of saved cards and bank accounts wherever the Portal offers the full payment method picker.
Tip
The methods you can save, and how you enter a new one, depend on the payment processor your association uses. Rhythm may also offer digital wallets, such as Google Pay or Apple Pay, on some pages.
Warning
A VPN or virtual desktop connection can stop the card-entry area from loading. If this happens, disconnect from the VPN and try again, or test from a different network or device, such as a mobile hotspot. Clearing your browser cache can also help if the fields still do not appear.
Saving a card only stores it. Rhythm does not always confirm immediately that the card will authorize a charge, so an invalid card might not be caught until you use it to pay. Enter your billing postal code exactly, with no extra characters such as commas, because extra characters can cause a later payment to fail. If a saved method’s billing address is wrong, you cannot correct that detail in place. Delete the method and add it again with the correct details.
A few less common situations can also prevent you from saving or using a method:
- If the name on the card does not match your account, saving it can fail with a duplicate-method error. This can make it hard to save a company card that is not in your own name.
- Some payment processors limit how many cards or bank accounts you can have on file. Authorize.net, for example, allows up to 10. If saving fails and you are already at that limit, remove an older saved method first.
- An unusually long organization name on your Rhythm profile has, in one case, prevented a payment method from saving. Shortening it resolved the problem.
- Billing addresses in Macau have failed validation before the payment reached the processor.
- On a donation, entering card details with an invalid address can cause the save to fail and leave an incomplete method that you cannot delete from the Portal. Contact your association if this happens. For a bank account, leaving the save option unchecked is a workaround for this specific case.
- For cards saved with Rhythm Payments, your card details can refresh automatically in the background through the payment provider. You do not need to update a saved method just because its card is due to expire, though you can always update it the next time you pay for something.
- An "invalid authentication values" error when you save or pay with a card usually points to a gateway configuration issue, not a problem with the card details you entered.
- With some processors, a card declined for invalid details can still leave a saved payment profile on file. Remove it from your saved methods list if you no longer want it there.
- You may occasionally see a browser security warning while adding several cards in a row, such as during an event registration. It does not stop the cards from being added successfully, and you can ignore it.
- A payment can fail because the card has already reached its daily spending limit. If that happens, try a different card, or wait until the next day and try the same card again.
- If card payment is unavailable because your country is temporarily blocked at the payment processor level, contact your association. Staff can process the payment for you in the Console while that issue is unresolved.
- A generic decline message does not always explain why the card was declined. If that happens, contact your card issuer directly; they can give you the specific reason in a way Rhythm's own message cannot.
Why You Sometimes See a Shorter List
Some Portal pages show a shorter, compact list of your saved payment methods instead of the full picker. The compact list uses a different, more limited source of saved methods. Depending on how your association processes payments, a method you saved through the full picker might not appear in the compact list, even though it is still saved. If a method is missing from a compact list, look for it on a page that shows the full payment method picker.
A saved method’s visibility can also depend on where you first saved it and whether you chose to securely save it to your profile at the time. A method saved through one part of Rhythm does not automatically show up everywhere else. The card shown for automatic renewal in the Portal is not always the same as a method your association’s current payment processor has on file. This is most likely when your association previously used a different payment processor, because an older saved card can still display in the Portal without being usable for a new charge. Seeing a method listed as saved also does not guarantee it can be charged. In rare cases, the underlying saved details are missing, and that only becomes visible when a renewal or other automatic charge tries to use the method and fails.
Automatic Renewal Needs a Saved Payment Method
When you set up a purchase, such as a membership, to renew automatically, Rhythm needs a saved payment method to charge when the renewal is due. If a purchase offers automatic renewal, you are asked to save a payment method as part of turning it on. If you are not signed in to the Portal, Rhythm cannot save a method for you, so automatic renewal is not available for that purchase.
Saving a method successfully does not guarantee it will be charged successfully later. The card’s issuing bank can still decline a future renewal even though the card saved without a problem, and a payment processor may decline a saved card as expired even when it does not look expired in your saved methods. If that happens, try a different payment method. If an automatic renewal fails with an error that the payment token could not be found, delete the saved method and add it again. This often resolves the error, including after your association has changed payment providers, because saving the method again creates a new token with the current provider. The same delete-and-add step has also fixed some other renewal failures involving a saved method that was not behaving as expected. If a stored method fails right at checkout, or the error mentions a missing security code, try paying with a different card, or complete a full checkout once with the card entered fresh and saved again there.
Warning
The prompt to save a method for automatic renewal does not appear on the sign-in-free public payment page opened from a shared invoice link. To set up automatic renewal, sign in to the Portal and pay from your account instead.
What Rhythm Shows About a Saved Method
A saved method’s row shows an identifying name, such as a card type with its last four digits or a bank account described the same way. Rhythm creates this name unless you named the method yourself. Full card and account numbers are never shown; only the last few digits appear.
Occasionally, the payment processor does not return every detail when a card is saved, so a saved method’s name can show null in place of the last four digits, or show a recognized card type with no other details. The card may still have saved successfully. If you later see a payment fail with an error mentioning the card’s digits, delete that saved method and add the card again. A card added while paying an invoice can also display the wrong card type after it saves, such as showing as Visa when it is not. That is a display issue with the saved record, not a sign that the payment failed. If you save a card through a Stripe Link option, Rhythm may not receive full card details at all, so that method appears only as a generic secure linked entry instead of a normal saved card. If you pay by card without saving it, your association’s payment record for that transaction shows the card number as hidden instead of showing its last four digits.
Related Reading
To pay an invoice using a saved method, see Pay and View Your Payments in the Portal. To review an invoice before paying it, see View and Access an Invoice in the Portal. To see your overall balance and payment history, see View Your Account Summary in the Portal.