Call the company you owe first. Call your bank second. Both today. The order is the whole point: the biller decides the late fee and when the payment is retried, and a second failed retry usually costs you another fee from the bank on top.

Call one: the company you owe

Ask for the retry date, not for forgiveness:

The payment scheduled for [date] came back. I can pay on [date]. Can you hold the retry until then and waive the late fee?

Before you hang up, get three things: the exact date they will re-run it, whether the late fee was waived or only paused, and a confirmation number. Without a confirmation number the call did not happen, as far as their system is concerned.

Call two: your bank

Ask whether a returned-item fee was charged, and ask for a one-time courtesy refund of it in the same breath. Then ask them to turn off overdraft coverage on your debit card so the next retry gets declined instead of paid with a fee attached. Turning it off costs nothing.

Do not let it retry on its own

An automatic retry into the same empty account is the expensive outcome: a fee from the biller and a fee from the bank, for a payment that still didn't go through. Pick a date you are sure about, even if it's later than you'd like, and say that date out loud on call one.

If it's rent

Make a third call, to 211. It's free, it runs day and night, and it routes you to local rent and utility assistance in your county. Ask your landlord in writing whether a partial payment today changes the late fee, and what date the grace period ends in your lease. Those two answers cost nothing and often change what you need to borrow, or whether you need to borrow at all.