We present a methodology to renormalize the nucleon-nucleon interaction in momentum space, using a recursive multiple subtraction approach that prescinds from a cutoff regularization, to construct the kernel of the scattering equation. The subtracted scattering equation is solved with the next-leading-order and nextto-next-leading-order interactions. The results are presented for all partial waves up to j = 2, fitted to lowenergy experimental data. In this renormalization group invariant approach, the subtraction energy emerges as a renormalization scale and the momentum associated with it comes to be about the QCD scale ( QCD ), irrespectively to the partial wave.