What Should I Do if My MoonPay Purchase Fails or Is Declined?

MoonPay is the payment layer behind the buy button in wallets and apps like MetaMask, Trust Wallet and OpenSea. When a MoonPay purchase fails, in most cases MoonPay never took your money: your bank declined the card before the charge could go through. So the first move is not to contact MoonPay. It is to work out what your bank did.

Work through it in this order

Look for a 3-D Secure prompt first - a code by text, or an approve button in your banking app. If you missed it, that alone explains the failure, and opening the app before you press pay fixes it next time. Then ask your bank, in those words, whether the card is allowed to make cryptocurrency purchases; many will say no outright and save you an afternoon. Then check the available balance, including holds left by earlier attempts. Then try a smaller amount, since card limits bite at a specific number. Finally, switch methods: a different debit card, or a bank transfer.

Do not just keep retrying

Several failed attempts in quick succession trigger fraud controls on both sides, and repeated failed 3-D Secure attempts can lock you out of trying again for a while. Change one thing, wait, try once.

What happens to the money

A failed purchase leaves a pre-authorisation hold, not a charge - MoonPay does not capture funds from a transaction that did not complete. The hold releases on your bank's schedule, usually within a few days and up to about ten business days at the slowest. There is nothing to request and no refund to chase.

When the payment worked but no coins arrived

That is a different problem. The order is pending rather than declined, either in a compliance review or waiting on the blockchain. Your confirmation email carries a transaction id; look it up on a block explorer before you contact anyone, because that one line tells support more than a description of the screen will.

Keep that confirmation email either way - it is the only thing support can work from. The common reasons a crypto card payment is declined covers the bank side in full, and the three checkpoints a payment passes helps you tell a bank decline from a processor one.