Money / Pair 22 of 41

Still settling, or short by a fraction

An invoice that still says awaiting payment, hours after the coin left your wallet. There are two quite different explanations for that sentence, and one of them will never clear on its own.

Waiting and not-waiting look identical

The invoice is unchanged. Your wallet says sent. Nothing on the market screen distinguishes a payment on its way from one that arrived and did not match, since in both situations the invoice has nothing to show.

Only one of the two ends by itself. The other sits there indefinitely while looking every bit as patient as the first.

The second one surprises people most when nothing was mistyped. Plenty of wallets take the network fee out of the figure you entered rather than adding it on top, which turns an exactly correct amount into a slightly smaller one by the time it lands.

There are other quiet ways to arrive short. An exchange that sends on your behalf may round, may apply its own withdrawal charge to the amount rather than to your balance, or may quote an invoice figure in one unit and send in another. A quoted price that expires and is recalculated at a different rate does the same thing without anybody touching the numbers. In every one of those the money moved and moved correctly, and the invoice still sees a figure it cannot match.

Two amounts, one comparison

The comparison that decides this is not between what you meant to send and what the invoice asked. It is between what arrived and what the invoice asked. Those are different numbers any time your wallet subtracts its fee from the send rather than adding it, and the difference can be small enough to miss on a first look.

Where the missing fraction went

Where the amounts differ, the difference has usually gone to the network rather than anywhere sinister. That is worth understanding properly, and the pair on the two kinds of fee covers where each one is decided and who ends up with it. Knowing which party took the fraction does not fix the invoice, but it stops you hunting for somebody to blame who does not exist.

It also tells you how much to add next time, which is the only lasting fix. A wallet that subtracts its fee will keep subtracting it, so the figure to enter is the invoice amount plus room for the fee rather than the invoice amount exactly. Send the same way twice and you get the same shortfall twice.

The mistake that never resolves itself

If you treat a short payment as an unconfirmed one

You wait for a match that cannot happen, since two unequal numbers do not become equal on their own. The invoice window closes, and what could have been a quick correction turns into something a person has to reconcile by hand.

If you treat an unconfirmed payment as a short one

You top up. Now two transactions sit against one invoice, you have paid the network twice, and the original amount arrives anyway. You are owed the difference, and getting it back depends on somebody being willing to look.

The first never improves. Time makes a short payment worse, since it removes the easy window and leaves you asking for attention by hand. Topping up unnecessarily is expensive too, but at least it is visible straight away and the money is still somewhere the operator can see.

What to do once you know

If it is unconfirmed

Leave it and watch the confirmation count. Where your wallet can raise the fee on a pending transaction, that is worth doing. Send nothing else against the same invoice while the first one is still in the queue.

If it is short

Say so promptly, with the transaction id and both figures, and let somebody match it by hand. Do not assume a top up fixes it automatically, since a second transaction against a closed invoice creates a second thing to reconcile. The questions page collects what to establish first.

Questions readers send about this pair

My wallet says I sent the exact amount. How can it be short?

Many wallets deduct the network fee from the figure you enter rather than adding it on top. The chain then records a slightly smaller amount arriving at the address. Reading the credited amount rather than the debited one settles the question in a moment.

Does a short payment ever credit on its own?

Not usually, since matching is an equality check. Some systems tolerate a margin and some do not, and there is no way to tell from the outside which you are dealing with, so treat it as needing attention rather than needing patience.

Is an unconfirmed payment at risk of being lost?

Sitting in a queue is not the same as being gone. A low fee can hold a transaction for a long stretch, and it either confirms later or returns to your wallet as spendable. Neither of those outcomes is helped by sending a second one.