When does Kickstarter charge backers? And why some pledges fail

At the deadline, and only if it funds.

That’s the whole answer for a backer. For a creator it’s the start of a week that decides how much of your headline number you actually keep, and most founders don’t think about it until the campaign has already ended.

I’m an official Kickstarter Expert Partner, and this is the part of the money I’d want every founder to understand before launch rather than after.

When does Kickstarter charge backers?

A pledge is a promise, not a payment. Nothing is taken while the campaign is live. Kickstarter charges the backer’s card when the campaign reaches its funding deadline, and only if it has hit its goal.

If it hasn’t, nobody is charged. Not a penny. That’s the all-or-nothing rule doing exactly what it says, and it’s the reason backers are relaxed about pledging to a stranger in the first place.

There is one wrinkle. Some banks show a temporary hold when someone pledges, well before the campaign ends. It usually drops off within a few days, and how long depends on the bank rather than on Kickstarter.

It’s worth knowing because it generates comments. Expect at least one backer on day two asking why you’ve already taken their money.

You haven’t. It will be the bank. Have a one-line answer ready in your FAQ and move on.

The other exception runs the opposite way. Late pledges, made after a successful campaign has closed, are charged immediately. There’s no deadline left to wait for.

What happens when a card is declined

When the campaign ends, Kickstarter runs every pledge at once. Most go through. Some don’t.

A backer whose card fails has 7 days from the end of the campaign to fix it. Kickstarter emails them every 48 hours with a direct link.

At the end of the week it retries the original card one last time. If that fails too, the pledge is dropped and they’re no longer a backer.

The reasons are rarely dramatic. A card that was perfectly healthy when someone pledged in week one has had a month to expire, get cancelled after a lost wallet, or run out of room. And some banks simply block a charge they don’t recognise from a merchant they’ve never seen.

Dropped backers aren’t necessarily gone for good, though. Once Kickstarter has started transferring the funds to you, they can’t pledge through the campaign any more, but they can come back through late pledges if you’ve switched them on. That’s one of the quieter reasons to plan late pledges before launch rather than in the final week.

How many pledges never arrive

This is the number nobody puts on the campaign page.

PledgeBox, which deals with the clean-up after failed payments, puts dropped backers at somewhere between 3 and 10% of a campaign. My own planning figure is 5%. It sits at the careful end of normal without assuming disaster.

On a £30,000 campaign, that’s £1,500 which appeared on your page and never reached your bank.

The small mercy is that you don’t pay fees on money that was never collected. The platform fee and payment processing come off what’s left.

The Kickstarter fees calculator has a failed-pledges box for exactly this, set to 5% by default, so you can see the collected figure and the fees on it in one go rather than doing it twice on the back of an envelope. There’s a fuller breakdown of everything else that comes off in Kickstarter fees explained.

Where this bites is the goal. If the number you actually need is sitting exactly at your funding goal, failed pledges put you under it before you’ve made a single unit. A campaign that ends at 101% can easily collect 96%.

That’s one more reason the goal shouldn’t be “what production costs”. It should be what your list can clear in the first day or two, with the real production number covered by what comes in above it. I’ve made the full case in how to set your Kickstarter funding goal, and it’s the same logic that runs through everything I help founders build at adamwebb.pro.

The last 24 hours, and the cancellation rule

Backers can increase, reduce or cancel a pledge at any point while the campaign is live. There’s one exception, and it’s a useful one for creators.

In the final 24 hours, a backer can’t reduce or cancel a pledge if doing so would drop the project below its goal. Once the campaign has ended and collection has started, they can’t cancel at all.

So Kickstarter protects you in the last day. It doesn’t protect you on the day before that, and it can’t protect you from cards that fail after the deadline.

The honest fix for both problems is the same one: don’t be anywhere near the line. A campaign that funded on day one doesn’t care about a handful of cancellations in week three or a few declined cards at the end. The day one benchmark post explains why that should be the target, and the day one calculator tells you whether your list can actually get you there.

Not sure your goal leaves room for any of this? A £60 strategy call is the quickest way to put your real numbers in front of someone who has done the sums on campaigns before, and leave with the three things to change.

Pledge Over Time: three payments instead of one

Kickstarter now lets backers split a pledge into three equal payments, if the creator switches the option on. It’s called Pledge Over Time.

The first payment is taken when the campaign ends successfully. The other two follow monthly, so everything is collected within two months of the deadline. There’s no interest and no extra fee for the backer.

A few details matter if you’re deciding whether to use it:

• There’s a minimum. In pounds it’s £100, so a hero tier priced at £95 can’t use it at all.
• It isn’t available on late pledges. Only on pledges made during the campaign.
• Grace periods are longer for later payments. 7 days to fix the first, 14 days for the others.
• If a later payment fails for good, what the backer has already paid may be treated as support for the project, with any refund at the creator’s discretion.
• With Kickstarter’s own pledge manager, a backer on instalments only gets in once all three payments are complete.

The backer pages don’t spell out how instalment money reaches the creator. So before you switch it on, check the payout schedule in your dashboard. If you’re planning to pay a factory deposit out of your payout, you need to know exactly what arrives when.

What I’d actually do about it

None of this is a reason to worry. It’s a reason to put it in the spreadsheet.

Model 5% of pledges as never arriving, and make sure your goal still works after it. Build it in on day one of planning, not after the campaign has closed and a smaller number turns up.

Send one short update about 48 hours before the end asking backers to check the card on their pledge hasn’t expired. It costs nothing, and it catches the most common failure before it happens.

In the week after the campaign, chase declined pledges with a plain update of your own. Kickstarter’s reminders are automatic and easy to ignore. A message from the actual creator is harder to scroll past.

Switch on late pledges, so a backer who drops has a way back.

And don’t announce your campaign total as though it’s in the bank. It isn’t yet, and the money itself arrives later still. How long Kickstarter takes to pay out covers that part of the timeline.

Key takeaways

• Kickstarter charges backers at the funding deadline, and only if the campaign reaches its goal.
• Nothing is taken at pledge time, though some banks show a temporary hold that drops within days.
• Declined cards get 7 days, a reminder every 48 hours, one final retry, then the pledge is dropped.
• Plan for about 5% of pledges never collecting. PledgeBox puts dropped backers at 3 to 10%.
• In the final 24 hours, backers can’t cancel if it would drop the project below its goal.
• Pledge Over Time splits pledges of £100 or more into three monthly payments, if the creator enables it.

Want a hand with yours?

Most of the money questions on a Kickstarter get decided months before launch, when the goal is set and the tiers are priced. That’s the cheapest time to get them right.

If you want someone to check your numbers before you commit to them, book a £60 strategy call. An hour, on Zoom, on your actual campaign. And if you want help from pre-launch through to the end, the bigger options are on the home page.