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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 describe different outcomes for a particular attempt. They do not prove that no other payment or reservation exists: 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.

Stripe Currency or Amount Errors

If checkout reports an unsupported currency, check the product’s saved currency and your connected Stripe account. PayRequest supports 139 Stripe presentment currencies, including AUD; availability still depends on Stripe’s account-country and payment-method rules. Reconnecting an otherwise active Stripe account is not the first troubleshooting step. Check these details before retrying:
  • Currency: confirm the product uses the intended currency. Changing the currency does not convert its numeric price.
  • Amount precision: JPY and KRW require whole amounts. Stripe also requires whole amounts for ISK and UGX. PayRequest rejects unsupported fractions rather than silently changing the charge.
  • Payment method and minimum amount: a method may require a particular currency or a minimum charge. Check the specific error in Stripe before changing the price.
If the customer may already have paid, verify the exact payment first. A checkout error alone does not prove that no other payment succeeded. See Stripe currency guidance.

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.

When the customer has already paid

Share I paid, but my invoice is still open. Check the exact invoice and payment references before retrying or asking for another transfer. A failed or expired attempt does not rule out a different successful payment or authorization. An I have paid confirmation for an external method needs receipt verification by the business.

FAQ

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 that attempt failed, check whether another payment or reservation exists before drawing a conclusion. Compare the exact references and ask the customer for the relevant pending/completed bank entry if needed.
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.
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

Invoice payment history shows a pending entry

A pending transaction entry does not by itself mean the invoice is unpaid. Check the invoice’s current status, amount paid and remaining balance alongside its transaction history. Older pending attempts can remain visible after another attempt has paid the invoice. Do not ask the customer to pay again solely because one history entry is pending.