What is auto-recharge and how does it work?

Make sure that your prepay account has funds so that your ads are eligible to run uninterrupted.

With auto-recharge, you can help make sure that your prepay account has enough balance remaining to keep your ads running. If you don't set up auto-recharge and your balance remaining hits zero, we'll pause your campaigns and your ads will not display until you manually add more funds.

How does auto-recharge work?

If you sign up for auto-recharge, each time your account balance reaches 20 percent of the recharge amount, we will automatically charge your primary payment method and add funds to your account.

Important

For customers in India: Due to a regulation by the Reserve Bank of India (known as India E-Mandate), payments may not be processed if the credit or debit card you used was added to your account after April 1, 2021. In this case, we recommend:

For prepay auto-recharge: Manually add funds to your prepay account.
For postpay threshold: Pay your account balance.

Microsoft Advertisingwill remove all stored card information from the portal to address directives from the Reserve Bank of India restricting the storage of card data, effective September 30, 2022. This directive prevents Microsoft Advertising and other online merchants from storing the card information of customers located in India.

Starting October 1, 2022, you must add your card details for tokenization purposes and verify your payment method in Microsoft Advertising to add funds to your account or settle any balances.

Tokenization is a process by which sensitive credit or debit card numbers are converted to a randomly generated string of characters. This token ID is stored instead of your actual card information. This safeguards the card information and renders it unusable in the event of a data breach.

Microsoft Advertising needs consent to generate the token. If you don't consent to the card tokenization, we won't be able to retain the card information and you'll need to re-enter the payment method before each transaction. If you have any recurring payments set up, they might also be declined, in which case you'll have to make your payments manually.

Set up auto-recharge for a prepay account

To set up auto-recharge, you need to make sure that you are using a card, PayPal, or SEPA direct debit as your primary payment method.

From the top menu, select Tools > Billing & Payments.

If you're using the new Microsoft Advertising navigation, from the navigation menu on the left, hover over Billing and select Payments.
If you have multiple accounts, choose one from the account selector in the top menu.
From Billing summary, in the Current balance tile, select Set up auto-recharge.
Slide the switch to the right next to Auto-recharge settings, select or enter a custom amount, and select Save.

For a more in-depth look at other payment methods, see The Payment Methods page.