> ## Documentation Index
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# Account Updater

Account Updater (AU) is a service offered by credit card networks in the US and Europe that provides up-to-date customer credit card information to merchants who store card information for recurring billing. Customer credit card information can change for a number of reasons; such as a lost or stolen card, an expired card, and an account upgrade. Issuing banks participating in the AU program provide updated credit card information to Visa and MasterCard networks regularly. American Express also offers a similar service called AMEX Cardrefresher. Merchants that use Chase Paymentech as a provider can enable Real-Time Account Updater and Vindicia will update customer credit card information, if available, after a Transaction is declined and retry that Transaction immediately.

The AU service improves customer retention by keeping account information up to date without requiring customer input.

Vindicia provides Account Updater for all Subscribe merchants in a reactive mode (when a card payment is declined). Subscribe offers an extended preventive mode (prior to card payment decline) for specific payment providers. The AU input updates customer cards in Subscribe accordingly.

For preventive mode, the merchants can easily configure the desired behavior in case of declined cards such as whether to cancel the subscriptions or to ask for a new payment method.

**Tip:** The Account Updater requires the full credit card account number (PAN) to function. When credit card numbers are provided as tokens instead of the credit card account details, AU can only perform if the tokens can be detokenized, in other words converted back to the full credit card account number (PAN),

For a technical deep dive into AU, see [Account Updater Explained](https://docs.vindicia.com/bundle/howTo/page/topics/r_accountUpdaterExplained.html).

**Parent topic:**[Subscribe Payment Support](../topics/payments)


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