How can I troubleshoot a payment issue?

To troubleshoot a payment issue, select the specific payment in question from your transaction history. In the transaction details, you will see the payment type and the current status of the transaction.

You can use the tables in Understanding the Status of a Transaction as a helpful reference to break down every possible transaction status and what it means by payment type.

If you still have questions once you know the payment type and understand its current status, you can use other elements of the transaction details to help troubleshoot – some of which are covered below:

Lightning & LNURL

• Preimage (Sender) – Sent Lightning payments contain a preimage in the transaction details that acts as a receipt, confirming the funds have successfully left the federation wallet. If the intended recipient hasn't received the funds but you can see the preimage, you can share it with them as proof of payment. They can share this with their wallet provider, who can use it to track down the funds and credit their account. The same is true if you are withdrawing from a federation wallet to another wallet you own.
  • Note – In addition to paying individuals, preimages are useful if you are making payments in mods. For example, if you withdrew from Fedi using a mod like Tando and the funds have already left your federation wallet but M-PESA has not credited you with the equivalent amount of fiat, you can share the preimage with Tando to help them investigate as you can be sure the issue is not Fedi-related.
• Lightning request (Sender & Receiver) – This refers to the Lightning invoice, which is shown in the tx details whether you are making or receiving a payment. If the payment involves an OG federation connected to Fedi's Lightning Gateway(s) and you have either sent funds and do not see a preimage or someone claims they've paid you but you haven't received the funds, you can share the LN request with us and we can determine whether or not the funds were successfully sent or received by the Gateway.

On-Chain

• Transaction ID (Sender) – As soon as you send funds on-chain, you will see a Transaction ID in the transaction details. This ID serves as a unique identifier that you can enter into a blockchain explorer like Mempool.space to track the transaction amount, status, sender & receiver wallet addresses, and number of block confirmations. Note that the number of block confirmations needed for the recipient to be credited the funds varies depending on the destination wallet provider.
• Check incoming funds (Receiver) – New bitcoin addresses are monitored for 24 hours after creation. If funds are sent to an address more than 24 hours after it is created, use Check incoming funds to restart monitoring of the address for another 24 hours. You can also use this button to refresh the tx status if funds have yet to be credited after the required 11 confirmations. To see how many confirmations an incoming transaction has, enter the address in the "To" field of the tx details into a block explorer.

If you still need help with a payment after exhausting the above troubleshooting steps, reach out to our team via Ask Fedi so that we can investigate the issue further.