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A customer is debited but the order shows failed on the website, and the business does not know whether to ship, refund or ask for a second payment.
Check the payment ID in the gateway dashboard: captured means paid, pending means wait, failed means the customer's bank will auto-reverse within RBI's turnaround time.
A daily list of orders marked failed or pending, matched to the gateway's final payment status by order ID, with late-captured payments flipped to paid.
Orders marked paid only on a final success status, no duplicate charges, and customers told a clear reversal timeline when a payment truly failed.
The customer’s bank has taken the money, but your website did not receive the gateway’s confirmation that the payment succeeded. In most cases the payment is pending or was captured late, and it will reach you in a normal settlement. If it truly failed, the customer’s bank reverses it within the turnaround time set by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Either way, check the gateway dashboard before you refund or ask for a second payment.
Why does this happen?
An online payment passes through several parties: your website, the gateway, the card network or UPI, and two banks. Any of them can be slow. The customer sees “money deducted” from their own bank. Your website shows whatever status it last received from the gateway.
| Likely cause | What the gateway dashboard shows | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Timeout before the success message reached your site | Captured or successful | Mark the order paid |
| Payment still pending at the customer’s bank | Pending or processing | Wait for a final status |
| Authorised but not captured | Authorised | Capture it, or let it lapse and release |
| Success message sent but your site did not record it (webhook missed) | Captured | Fix the order status; check the webhook logs |
| Payment truly failed | Failed | Tell the customer the reversal timeline |
A “webhook” is the automatic message a gateway sends to your website when a payment’s status changes. If it fails, the payment can succeed while your order stays failed.
Should I ask the customer to pay again or wait?
Wait until you have checked. Search the gateway dashboard by your order ID or the customer’s email or phone.
- Captured or successful: the money is yours. Mark the order paid and ship. Do not refund.
- Pending: ask the customer to wait. Most pending payments resolve within minutes to a few hours.
- Failed: the customer can pay again safely. Their first debit will come back on its own.
If you ask for a second payment while the first is still pending, both may succeed, and you now owe the customer a refund.
How long before the customer’s money comes back automatically?
RBI’s circular of 20 September 2019 on harmonisation of turnaround time (TAT) sets the days within which a failed transaction must be reversed. For card and UPI payments to a merchant where the account was debited but the merchant did not receive confirmation, the reversal is due within T+5 days, where T is the transaction day. If it is late, the bank must pay the customer ₹100 for each day of delay beyond that.
You do not pay this compensation, and you do not need to refund a truly failed payment yourself. Doing so can leave the customer refunded twice.
Worked example: a ₹2,899 order
At 11:02 a customer pays ₹2,899 by card. Their bank SMS says ₹2,899 debited. Your website times out and shows the order as failed.
At 11:05 you search the gateway dashboard. The payment shows captured at 11:04. The gateway sent the success message, but your site missed it.
- Mark the order paid and ship.
- Do not refund.
- The ₹2,899 will appear in the next settlement, net of the fee. At an illustrative 2 percent fee (₹57.98) and 18 percent GST on it (₹10.44), you will receive ₹2,830.58 for this payment.
Check: ₹57.98 + ₹10.44 = ₹68.42, and ₹2,899 minus ₹68.42 is ₹2,830.58.
How stuck payments show up later
Late-captured, pending and reversed payments are the lines that make settlement files hard to match: an order marked failed but settled, or a refund for a payment that was never captured. A short daily list of “failed but debited” orders, checked against the gateway, prevents most of them.
What to read next
- Next in this series: UPI payment pending: will the merchant get the money or will it be refunded?
- Refund reconciliation for payment gateways
- Exception management in reconciliation
- Payment gateway reconciliation
Payment-gateway settlement reconciliation is on the TransactIG roadmap.
Content authored by practitioners with experience at Amazon India, Intuit QuickBooks, and the Tata Group. Meet the team →