If you have ever bought something online and watched the confirmation arrive before you had finished putting your card away, you have seen a shop taking a small bet. Most of the time it pays off. Occasionally it does not, and someone in a warehouse packs a box for money that never arrives.
We do not take that bet.
What “paid” means here
When you complete checkout, your payment method tells us one of three things: the money has moved, the money is on its way, or the money is not coming. Card payments almost always answer the first way, within a second or two. Bank transfers and some pay-later methods answer the second way, and then take anywhere from a few minutes to three business days to settle.
Your order exists either way. You can see it, we can see it, and it has a number. What waits is the fulfilment: no packing slip is printed and no receipt is sent until the payment is genuinely settled.
Why you might see “payment pending”
If you paid by bank debit, your order page will show payment pending for a while. That is not an error and there is nothing for you to do. When the funds clear, the page updates on its own and your receipt arrives.
If the payment fails instead — insufficient funds, a bank that declines the debit — the order moves to failed, we release the stock we were holding for you, and you get an email explaining what happened. Nothing is charged.
The unglamorous part
Holding stock for an unpaid order is the awkward middle. Reserve it and a slow bank transfer can keep a popular item off the shelf for days. Do not reserve it and the customer who waited three days for their bank finds the thing they bought is gone.
We reserve it, with a time limit. It is the option that fails in the direction we can apologise for.
