Manual versus automatic renewals

If you live in the US, Canada, or Europe, you should have access to modern gateways that save credit card numbers for you and give you a token so you can charge credit cards.

That's all subscriptions need to automatically charge someone's card. But if you live outside of those areas, or if you are having a hard time finding the right payment gateway, you might not be able to get credit card tokens and bill someone on a recurring basis automatically. In that case, there's a feature called Manual Renewals that you can enable:

Users who have manual renewals will receive an email and will have to click a link and pay for an order every month. It's much more work for the end-user and is only designed for stores that can't get access to modern payment gateways.

If you have a modern gateway, there's a very good chance you don't want to turn on this feature.