Auto top-up for the on-demand bank

Auto top-up refills your on-demand bank for you. You pick a number of sends, and when the bank drops below it, SEMAOS charges your card a set amount and adds it to the bank. Sequences that were paused because the bank ran dry pick up again on their own.

Only an account admin can turn it on, change it, or turn it off. Someone from SEMAOS support viewing your account can turn it off, but can't turn it on or change it, because the authorization is yours to give. It lives under Settings → Billing, in the on-demand bank card. Admins also get a link to it from Settings → Usage.

What do I set?

Three numbers:

Setting	What it means	Default	Allowed
Threshold	Charge when the bank holds fewer sends than this	1,000 sends	1 send or more, and fewer than the amount buys
Amount	What each charge adds to the bank	$50	$25 to $10,000, whole dollars
Monthly limit	The most auto top-up charges in one billing month	4 times the amount ($200 at the default)	From the amount up to $10,000, whole dollars

The threshold is counted in sends, at your plan's overage rate, which is the same figure Usage shows for the bank. On Starter, $50 buys about 66,666 sends at $0.75 per 1,000, so the threshold has to be lower than that. Otherwise a top-up couldn't lift the bank back above the threshold, and the next send would trigger it again.

Changing plans changes the rate. If the amount no longer buys more sends than the threshold at the new rate, auto top-up stays on but won't charge, and the Billing page says so. Use Change to raise the amount or lower the threshold.

Only the bank counts. Sends left in your monthly allowance don't, so a charge happens only once you're already into overage.

What does the monthly limit do?

Auto top-up won't make a charge that would take the billing month's charges over the limit. Once the next charge wouldn't fit, it waits until the next billing month. The billing month is the same window as your monthly send allowance, not the calendar month. Raising the limit lets it charge again in the same month, but only if one more charge fits under the new limit.

Sales tax, where it applies, is charged on top of each top-up. The bank gets the amount you set, and the limit counts that amount, not the tax: a $50 top-up with $4.15 of tax charges your card $54.15, adds $50 to the bank and uses $50 of the limit. If you turned auto top-up on before these terms, it charges without tax until you confirm them again: save Change, or turn it off and on.

When the limit stops a charge, every active admin gets an email. That happens once in a billing month, unless you raise the limit or lower the amount and the limit stops another charge later that month.

Which card does it charge?

The default card on your account, the one shown under Settings → Billing. When you turn auto top-up on, the window shows the last four digits of that card, and you tick a box to authorize the charges before you can save.

It has to be a card. If your default payment method is a Link account (Stripe's saved-checkout wallet), or you have no default, the window says so: use Update your card on the Billing page to add one, then come back. A card you used only for a one-off top-up doesn't count, because a top-up doesn't make it your default.

When you update your card on the Billing page while auto top-up is on, the card form asks whether to use the new card for auto top-up, as long as the account can change auto top-up. The box starts ticked. Leave it ticked and auto top-up charges the new card from then on; untick it and auto top-up turns off until you turn it back on. A card saved from a support session leaves auto top-up as it was.

If your default card changes some other way, auto top-up won't charge the new card, and the next time a charge is due it turns off instead. When the new default is a different card, the Billing page says so before then: turn auto top-up off and on again to authorize it. If the default card is removed or isn't a card, auto top-up still won't charge, and it turns off at the next charge.

What if a charge fails?

Auto top-up turns off and every admin gets an email. Nothing retries a declined card by itself.

If the card was declined, update it on the Billing page and turn auto top-up back on. Sometimes the bank wants to confirm the charge with an extra check (usually 3D Secure), and that can't happen while you're away. In that case use Update your card, where your bank can confirm the card, then turn auto top-up back on.

After a charge, a failed charge or most skipped ones, SEMAOS waits at least 10 minutes before it tries another. A declined charge starts the wait too, so if you fix the card and turn auto top-up back on right away, the first new charge can take up to 10 minutes. (A skip because you turned auto top-up off or changed its settings doesn't start the wait.)

A failed charge doesn't change how sending works. The bank stays where it was, and sequence steps that need it pause until the next top-up. If a broadcast reaches an empty bank while an automatic top-up is being charged, it waits and its waiting recipients send once the charge lands, for up to 30 minutes. If the charge fails, doesn't finish in that time, or no top-up is under way, those recipients are counted as failed, the same as without auto top-up.

When can't I turn it on?

Auto top-up is for paid plans that SEMAOS bills directly. You can't turn it on:

• on Free, or during a trial (a trial sends from its 1,000-send trial allowance, not the bank);
• while a payment is past due, including the 7-day grace after a failed renewal (a one-off top-up still works then);
• while the account is paused, read only, closed, on hold, set to close, or has sending suspended.

If the account moves to Free, is set to close, closes, goes on hold, or a payment is disputed, auto top-up turns off. It stays off afterwards until an admin turns it back on.

If a payment becomes past due, or the account is paused or has sending suspended, while auto top-up is on, it stays on but makes no charge. It starts charging again once the account is active.

How do I turn it off?

Click Turn off next to it under Settings → Billing. That works in any account state: while auto top-up is on, its line and the Turn off button stay on the Billing page even when the on-demand bank card isn't shown there (on Free, or while the account is on hold). It stops future charges; it doesn't refund earlier ones. Your settings stay, so turning it back on starts from them, and you authorize the charges again.

After each charge, SEMAOS emails the admins a receipt with the new balance and how much of the monthly limit is used.

Where do I see past charges?

Under Settings → Billing, in Auto top-up history. It lists the last 10 entries, with the date, the amount, and what happened:

Result	What it means
Added	The card was charged and the amount went into the bank.
In progress	SEMAOS is working on it and it hasn't finished yet.
Declined	The card was declined. Auto top-up turned off.
Needs authentication	Your bank wanted an extra check. Auto top-up turned off.
Not charged	Something went wrong on our side before the card was charged. Auto top-up may have turned off, so check its line on the Billing page.
Failed	The attempt failed and the history can't tell whether the card was charged. Contact support.
Skipped	Nothing was charged, and the line says why: for example, the monthly limit was reached, the settings changed, or the bank had already been topped up.

If auto top-up is skipped several times in a row for the same reason and the same amount, those skips share one entry. That entry says how many times it happened and shows the first and last time. Every charge, decline and failure gets its own entry. If the run reaches further back than the 500 most recent attempts, the entry says "or more" and shows only when the run ended. The list always keeps the most recent attempt that wasn't skipped, however many skips came after it.

Only admins see the history, and it shows no card details.