When a customer's payment fails

Every so often a customer's card gets declined or a checkout attempt just doesn't go through. It happens for all kinds of ordinary reasons — insufficient funds, a bank's fraud check, an expired card, a typo in the card number — and it isn't something wrong with your payments account.

What happens when it fails

Nothing is charged. If a customer's payment attempt fails, no money moves — not to you, and not out of their account either. It simply doesn't go through, and they'll typically see a decline message right on the checkout page telling them to try again or use a different card.

Checking on a specific payment

The most reliable place to see the status of an individual payment is your payments dashboard, which you can reach from Settings → Payments — it lists every attempt, successful or not, with the reason a card was declined when the bank gave one.

Ask me about a payment in chat too — I'll tell you what I can see, and I'll point you at your dashboard rather than guess when I can't see the individual attempt.

What to do about it

Since nothing was charged, there's nothing to refund or undo — the simplest fix is usually to have your customer try again. If you sent them a payment link, that same link still works; they can just retry it with a different card. If you'd rather send a fresh one, ask me and I'll make a new payment link for you (see "Setting up payments vs. sending a payment link").

If it keeps happening

A single decline is usually just that customer's bank or card, not something on your end. If a customer tells you the same payment keeps failing, it's worth having them check with their bank directly — that's usually where a repeated decline gets resolved.

This is different from a late subscription payment

This article is about a customer's payment to you failing. If you're wondering what happens when your own subscription payment is late, see "Your plan, trial, and billing" instead — that's a separate thing, and it doesn't stop your co-founder from working.