In Gandi Automatic renewal, I described how domain names can be automatically renewed at Gandi.net. I also unfold how my first domain renewal could have been disastrous and why I ended up renewing my domain manually. To make a long story short, Automatic renewal occurs ONLY if funds are available in the chosen prepaid account
1.
It is important to understand that Gandi did not keep my payment details (from signing up), which contrasts to what happened with my hosting provider (see SiteGround Auto-renewal). While prepaid accounts are opened automatically during your first purchase
2, you have to add money for them to be operable.
Now, it is possible to set up your Gandi account to automatically withdraw funds from your credit card in order to credit your Gandi prepaid account
. However, by contrast to SiteGround, you have to save your credit card info (or other payment method) wittingly. So, how to add a payment method?
Automatic payment
It is worth mentioning that you can credit your prepaid account manually and set an alert system (via e-mail) when your balance falls beneath a certain threshold
2. Nevertheless, I opted for the Automatic payment instead and decided to add a payment method (i.e. credit card). A more practical, but also necessary, measure to keep using the Automatic renewal feature!
You can register a payment method so that your prepaid account is always topped up.Gandi.net
The procedure to do so is straightforward. Still, you must have 3D Secure set up on your credit card for this to work
2.
Simply, I logged into my account, went to the Billing section (on the left) and then to Payment method (on the top). There, Gandi explains why you should register a payment method, as well as the fact that the payment method will be registered securely (with Gandi’s bank provider) and can be edited or deleted at any time. After reading these explanations, I clicked on Add a payment method.
As indicated in their documentation, I was asked to provide a label to identify this payment method
2. After doing so, I clicked Validate, which redirected me to a different interface.
In order to link your card and our billing system, a €1.00 authorization request will be made. No debit will be performed from your bank account.Gandi.net
I proceeded with the payment, i.e. filled my credit card details, as well as a secure code from my bank. Once the transaction completed, I followed the link back to my Gandi account. There was a confirmation that my order of zero euro had been processed. When I went back to the initial tab, my credit card was recorded and active.
Beware the procedure described here applies to French customers (as well as French-speaking Belgian and Swiss customers) only. For Worldwide customers, check Gandi docs instead.
That’s it
This is all I had to do. For Worldwide customers, the procedure (to add a payment method) is even simpler. Still, not having done this earlier could have cost me my domain name (see Gandi Automatic renewal). To sum up, if you are using the Automatic renewal feature (and you should), it is critical to have an Automatic payment in place. The two go hand in hand!
The question now is to see how Gandi handles credit card expiration. Given my newly registered card, this is not a concern for now, though.
Coming next: Should I worry about credit card expiration with SiteGround?
1 See Domain Renew. ^
2 See Billing. ^