Check on a card payment that has not gone through

Ask the payment provider what happened to a card or pre-authorized debit payment that is still sitting as Pending, and have it recorded if it did go through.

Before you start

• You need to be a property manager or account owner.
• This is only for card and pre-authorized debit payments. Those are collected by the payment provider, not by you, so they are recorded here when the provider says they went through.
• Cash, cheque and Interac e-Transfer work the other way around. You mark those received yourself, and they are covered in "Record a rent payment".

Why a card payment can sit as Pending

A card payment is normally recorded within seconds of the tenant paying. The message that tells us it went through comes from the payment provider, and once in a long while that message does not arrive, usually because of a problem at the provider's end.

When that happens the tenant's card has been charged but the rent still reads as unpaid, so reminders keep going out to someone who has already paid. The app re-checks anything unsettled every hour on its own, so this almost always sorts itself out. This page is for when you want the answer now.

Check it yourself

1. Open Payments from the Money section.
2. Set the status filter to Pending to bring the unsettled payments together.
3. Find the row and select Check with the provider.

You get one of four answers, and each says exactly what happened:

• The provider confirmed it. The payment is recorded straight away, the rent balance updates, and the receipt becomes available, exactly as if the original message had arrived on time.
• The provider says it did not go through. The payment is marked failed and the rent stays owing. This only happens when the tenant actually tried to pay and it was declined or returned.
• The payer did not finish. They started paying and stopped, so the payment is cancelled. Nothing was charged.
• The provider has not settled it yet. Nothing has changed. This covers two normal situations. Either the money is on its way, which is what a pre-authorized debit looks like for one to three business days, or the tenant has not started paying at all. A payment waiting on the tenant is never marked failed, so nobody is told their payment bounced when they have simply not paid.

Good to know

• You cannot mark a card or pre-authorized debit payment as received by hand, anywhere in the app. Only the provider can confirm one, which is what stops a payment being recorded here that never actually happened.
• Checking is safe to repeat. Asking twice can never record the same money twice.
• The check is limited to a few requests a minute for each account, because every press asks the provider directly. If you see a message about too many requests, wait a minute and try again.
• A row that says it never got a reference from the provider cannot be looked up. Find it in your Stripe dashboard instead.
• If several payments are stuck at once, it is likely a problem at the provider rather than anything about those tenants. Contact support and we will look at it across the whole platform.
• A rent charge that is simply unpaid will sit as Pending until the tenant pays it. That is not a fault, and checking with the provider will keep saying it has not settled yet. Chase the rent the way you normally would.