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Reval runs on top of Mercado Pago, and that brings real constraints worth understanding before you go to production. The limitations you’ll find on this page aren’t bugs or pending roadmap items: they’re consequences of how Mercado Pago’s mandate system works, and in some cases of the financial regulation in the country where you operate. Some reference features from global apps like Skio or Recharge are genuinely impossible on top of Mercado Pago, and Reval models them honestly instead of faking them. Documenting them head-on is part of the product’s positioning.
A Mercado Pago mandate can only debit on its own cycle dates: it can’t be executed on demand, brought forward or rescheduled. That’s the origin of most of the limitations detailed below, and it isn’t a Reval decision.In Argentina there’s an additional regulatory constraint: you can’t charge a stored card without the cardholder being present in the transaction. It’s the framework every payment processor in the country operates within. If you operate in another market, check which rules apply to yours.

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Current limitations

What it means: You can’t start a charge whenever you need to. There’s no “charge now” button for an active subscription outside its scheduled cycle.Why this limitation exists: Mercado Pago mandates are designed for periodic charges on predefined dates, not for arbitrary charges on the merchant’s demand. In markets like Argentina there’s an additional regulatory constraint: charging a stored card requires the cardholder’s active presence.The available alternative: All charges happen automatically on the mandate’s scheduled cycles. If you need to charge for a one-off item outside the cycle, use the add-ons feature: the customer adds them from the portal, the charge runs at that moment with their active participation, and the product ships on the next cycle.
What it means: The customer can skip their next delivery from the portal (if you enable it in Settings → Orders and inventory), but the following charge date may shift by a few days from the one we promised them.Why this limitation exists: Mercado Pago has no “skip”: you can’t omit a charge or move the next date (next_payment_date is read-only). Reval solves it by pausing the debit and automatically reactivating it one cycle later. It’s the same subscription — same price, same products, same card, same history — but the exact date of the subsequent charge is decided by Mercado Pago when it reactivates the mandate, not by us.What you see in practice: on skipping, the portal immediately shows the expected date. When the debit is reactivated, Reval reads the real date from Mercado Pago and updates the portal if it differs. The cycle the customer skipped is never charged.If you’d rather not offer it: leave the toggle off (it’s off by default) and the button won’t appear in the portal. For longer interruptions, pausing is still the right tool: the customer pauses and resumes whenever they want, without losing settings or history.
What it means: The next cycle’s date is set by the mandate and isn’t directly editable from the portal or from the merchant panel.Why this limitation exists: The charge date is tied to the structure of the mandate in Mercado Pago. Changing it live would mean creating a new mandate or altering an existing one in ways MP doesn’t support without affecting the cycle’s integrity.The available alternative: If the customer needs a different charge date, the flow is: cancel the current subscription and re-subscribe. When a new subscription is created, the first charge happens immediately, which establishes a new base date for all following cycles. Reval guides the customer through this process from the portal.
What it means: If a customer subscribed to a monthly plan, they can’t switch to a bimonthly or weekly plan without cancelling their current subscription.Why this limitation exists: Charge frequency is an immutable attribute of the Mercado Pago mandate. Once created with monthly periodicity, that mandate will always charge monthly. There is no “update frequency” operation in the MP API.The available alternative: cancel the current subscription and create a new one with the desired frequency, from the product page. The customer has to enter their card details again, because each mandate needs a new token.
What it means: Each subscription has a single card attached. You can’t configure a second card as an automatic fallback for when the primary one fails.Why this limitation exists: Mercado Pago’s mandate model doesn’t account for backup cards. Each mandate is linked to a single card token. Managing multiple cards per mandate would require fallback logic that MP doesn’t support natively and that would introduce significant operational complexity.The available alternative: there’s no automatic fallback, but the customer can change the payment method from the portal at any time — even during the retries of a declined charge, before the mandate is cancelled. And if the mandate has already been cancelled due to failed charges, the portal offers to reactivate the subscription with a new card (a new subscription is created with the same products and address, at the current list price). Both the change and the reactivation require the cardholder to enter the new card’s details (Mercado Pago tokens are single-use and can only be issued with the cardholder present), which is why they can’t be done from the admin on their behalf.
These limitations cover specific use cases in the billing cycle. For everything else —pausing a subscription, resuming it, changing products, adjusting quantities, adding one-time items, editing the shipping address, changing the payment method or cancelling while stating a reason— the self-service portal gives the customer full control without needing you to step in.