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Easy Digital Downloads Documentation
Documentation, Reference Materials, and Tutorials for Easy Digital Downloads

What do the different payment statuses mean?

A payment may have a variety of statuses, here’s a list of each and what they mean.

view of payment statuses

Pending

This is a payment that has begun, but is not complete.  An example of this is someone who has filled out the checkout form and then gone to PayPal for payment.  We have the record of sale, but they haven’t completed their payment yet.

Complete

This is a payment that has been paid and the product delivered to the customer.

Refunded

This is a payment where money has been transferred back to the customer and the customer no longer has access to the product.

Failed

This is a payment where the payment process failed, whether it be a credit card rejection or some other error.

Abandoned

If a Pending payment is never completed it becomes Abandoned after a week.

Revoked

Revoked payments restrict access to the product without refunding money.

Preapproved

A preapproved payment is one where the customer has approved the payment, but it hasn’t been processed yet.  It’ll be processed at a later date.

On Hold

An Order’s status will update to On Hold if the customer disputes a payment. The On Hold status will disable the license and prevent downloads while the dispute process takes place. The dispute reason will be shown below the order status. If a dispute is accepted or lost, the store admin will need to initialize a refund. In the event the dispute is reversed, a store admin can set the order status back to Completed.

Cancelled

Cancelled is used in two different scenarios. One deals with  Recurring Payments. When a subscription is cancelled then the original payment gets set to cancelled as well.

Cancelled is also used with preapprovals. A preapproval may be cancelled before payment is made.

Note: This payment status is no longer used. It was formerly required by Recurring Payments but now exists only for backwards compatibility.

Subscription

This refers to a renewal payment for a subscription that uses recurring billing. This payment status will be present if Recurring Payments is active.

Other

This list is not comprehensive as some extensions to Easy Digital Downloads introduce additional statuses. If you see an available payment status which is not on this please, please consult the documentation for the extensions you are currently using.