What does the status of my card payment mean?

bunq

Hey bunqers 🌈

To Make Life Easy, we’ve made card payments clearer than ever - there are now 4 simple statuses to tell you exactly what’s happening with your card payment. Here’s what each one of them means.

Refund payment pending

This status means that the merchant has initiated a refund to your bank account. You’ll receive the payment once the merchant sends out the funds. This usually takes around 5-10 business days, but it can take up to 30 days in some cases. This is because the refund process involves communication between us and the merchant.

Further information can be found here.

Expired

Outgoing card payments

When you book or buy something, the merchant issues a "pre-authorization" on your account. This is a guarantee towards the merchant that there’s enough money in your account, and obliges us to reserve that amount for them.

The merchant is then supposed to inform us of the final amount. In 99.994% of cases, this happens within 30 days, and any extra money reserved is released immediately upon notification. Reserved payments are held for a set period, which varies by merchant payment type - some for 7 days, others for 14, with a maximum of 30 days. This period is determined by Mastercard and neither bunq nor the merchant have control over it.

Rental payments (e.g., car rentals, hotel deposits):
- The merchant should inform us of the exact balance they need to take and release any unused amount back to your account.
Vending machine payments, Maestro card payments, and ATM transactions:
- The merchant reserves the exact amount and processes it within 7 days.
Public transport payments:
- The merchant reserves the exact amount and processes it within 14 days.

More details about how reserved payments work can be found here.

Complete

For outgoing card payments

For outgoing card payments, this status means that the card payment has been successful, and the merchant has already collected the money from us.

Because of that, if you need a refund for this payment, your first step would be to contact the merchant directly. If for some reason you can’t get a refund from the merchant, you can then contact us through our Support center and ask us to reverse the payment.

Keep in mind that we’ll need to see proof of your communication with the merchant regarding the refund before we can reverse the payment for you.

For incoming card payments

For incoming card payments, this status means that the payment was successfully received to your account. Therefore the status of the payment changes to “Received”.

In the sub-account’s payment history you can see all the statuses of the payment in separate events in chronological order.

Further information on the matter can be found here.