ESEN

Monthly retainers

Turn your quotes into automatic monthly subscriptions where the client authorizes their card only once.

Goodbye to the hassle of collecting every month

If you are a marketing agency, a consulting firm, or you sell a service on a “Retainer” basis, you know how painful it is to have to send a payment link or a manual invoice to your client every 1st of the month and chase them down to pay it.

Cord Payments solves this by turning your quote into a real subscription, natively integrated with your bank account.

How to enable a monthly retainer?

For the recurring model to work, it is strictly required that you have Cord Payments connected (see Connect your account) and the Credit/debit card method enabled. (Note: automatic monthly billing cannot work with SPEI, because SPEI requires the client to manually initiate the transfer from their bank every month).

  1. Open your quote editor.
  2. On the right sidebar, under “Terms”, toggle the Monthly recurring charge (retainer) switch.
  3. This will automatically disable the “Upfront” option, as a recurring charge is a fixed fee.

The client experience

When you send the quote link, the client will read their proposal normally, but they will notice the approval button is different:

  1. The button will say “Authorize monthly charge of $X”.
  2. Upon clicking, the client will securely enter their credit or debit card.
  3. The system will make the first charge immediately to activate the retainer, marking the quote as Approved.
  4. Cord Payments handles tokenizing the card and charging that exact amount automatically every month, sending the funds straight to your bank account.

You never store card data — the system handles tokenization and automatic retries if the client’s card fails one month due to insufficient funds. If a monthly charge fails, you’ll see it flagged in the “Active retainers” widget on the payments dashboard.

Every monthly charge pays the same fee as a normal card payment — there’s no volume discount for recurring charges. That fee (4% + $3.00 MXN + VAT) is the current rate for retainers charged in Mexican pesos; for a retainer in another currency, check Settings › Payments. See the details in Fees and advantages.

Cancellation

Unlike traditional quotes (which switch to a “Paid” status once fully paid), a recurring retainer is never marked as fully paid, because it is continuous.

In your dashboard, inside the details of that quote, you will see a status card indicating that the subscription is “Active”. When you decide to end the business relationship with the client, simply press the red “Cancel retainer” button. This will instantly stop all automatic charges for the following months.