Every phone carries a standing choice for where its renewals take their money. You set it once under the phone's Subscription row, and any single payment can override it for that payment alone.
The three choices
| Choice | What happens at every charge |
|---|---|
| Wallet, then card | Spend the wallet balance first and put only the remainder on the card. The default for a new phone. |
| Wallet only | Wallet balance only. If it does not cover the price, the payment is refused, or the renewal fails and is retried. The card is never touched. |
| Card | Card only. The wallet is never touched, even if it could cover the price. |
Alongside the choice you can pin a particular card to the phone. Without one, the phone follows whichever card is marked as your default at the time. A pinned card stays with the phone even if you change your default later; deleting that card puts the phone back to following the default.
Paying now with something else
When you extend a phone, renew an expired one, or buy a new one, the review step lets you pick the wallet or a specific card for that payment. It does not change the standing choice; if you want the phone to renew that way from now on, change the Subscription row as well.
On Android
Where Google Play is how you pay, there is no card, so phones there are wallet only. Renewals come off your balance, and topping up through Play is the fix when a renewal cannot be charged.
A card choice with no card on the account is allowed, since you may add one later, but the next renewal will fail until you do. The failure notice says so.
When a phone is transferred, its choice resets to wallet-then-card with no pinned card and auto-renew off, so the previous owner's card is never charged for a phone they no longer own.
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