Payment Failures
When a payment doesn’t go through, the first step is figuring out which of PayRequest’s status buckets it landed in — that tells you whether it’s worth retrying, whether the customer needs to act, or whether it’s already handled automatically.This page is about diagnosing a single failed payment as a merchant. For automatic retry behavior on subscriptions, see Failed Payment Handling — that page covers the retry schedule and chargeback reason codes in detail and isn’t repeated here.
Reading the Status
Transactions and Mollie payments use a small set of statuses. On the Transactions page or a transaction’s detail view, look for:Failed, Canceled, and Expired are all “didn’t result in money” outcomes, but they mean different things: Failed usually means the payment method itself was declined (e.g. by the customer’s bank or card issuer); Canceled means someone actively backed out; Expired means the customer simply never finished the checkout session in time.
Diagnosing a Specific Payment
1
Open the transaction
Find it under Transactions, or from the related customer/invoice/order.
2
Check the status and timestamps
The detail view shows
Failed Date or Canceled Date where applicable, alongside the payment method used.3
Sync with the provider if the status looks stale
Mollie-based transactions have a Sync with Mollie action on their detail page that re-fetches the latest status directly from Mollie — useful if you suspect PayRequest’s copy hasn’t caught up yet. PayPal transactions have an equivalent Sync with PayPal action.
4
Look for a pattern
One failed payment from one customer is usually just a declined card or an abandoned checkout. Multiple failures across different customers in a short window is more likely a provider-side or configuration issue — check your payment provider’s own dashboard/status page.
Common Causes
- Card declined by the issuing bank — insufficient funds, fraud flags, or the card being blocked for online/international payments. The customer needs to contact their bank or use a different method.
- iDEAL/bank redirect abandoned — the customer started the bank redirect flow but didn’t complete authorization; this typically shows as Canceled or Expired rather than Failed.
- Checkout session expired — the customer took too long to complete the payment page.
- Chargeback/dispute on a subscription payment — handled by the automatic retry system; see Failed Payment Handling.
Abandoned Checkouts
If a customer starts a checkout but never completes it (no payment attempt was even made, so there’s no Failed/Canceled transaction at all), that’s tracked separately as an abandoned checkout, with optional recovery reminders. See Checkout Recovery.FAQ
A payment shows as Failed but the customer says they were charged. What do I do?
A payment shows as Failed but the customer says they were charged. What do I do?
Use the Sync with Mollie/Sync with PayPal action on the transaction to pull the latest status directly from the provider — PayRequest’s copy may just be behind. If the provider also shows it as failed, the customer’s bank likely reversed an authorization that never settled; ask them to check with their bank.
Can I manually mark a failed payment as paid?
Can I manually mark a failed payment as paid?
Don’t do this to “fix” a status — Transaction records should reflect what actually happened at the provider. If you received payment by another means (e.g. a manual bank transfer), record it through the appropriate manual payment flow rather than editing a failed transaction’s status.
Does a Failed payment retry automatically?
Does a Failed payment retry automatically?
Only for subscriptions, and only for specific recoverable reasons (insufficient funds). One-off payment page or Smart Link payments do not auto-retry — the customer needs to try again.
Next Steps
Failed Payment Handling
Automatic retries and chargeback handling for subscriptions
Checkout Recovery
Recover abandoned checkouts before they become failed payments
Sync Problems
When transaction data looks out of date