What happens if a crypto payment underpays or overpays?

Cryptocurrency payments occasionally do not match the requested amount. Wallets round, network fees confuse some users about whether they are taken from the transfer amount, exchange rates drift between invoice generation and send. Valid Email Checker handles these mismatches with two distinct paths — one for underpayment, one for overpayment — and a 1% tolerance band that covers normal crypto rounding.

The 1% underpayment tolerance

When CoinPayments confirms a payment, VEC compares the actually-paid USD amount to the expected amount. If the paid amount is within 1% of expected (or above), the transaction is treated as successful and credits land normally. The tolerance exists because crypto-to-USD conversion at confirmation time is rarely pixel-perfect against the invoice quote — wallet rounding, fee deduction quirks, and timing drift commonly land within 1%.

Underpayment beyond 1%

• Transaction status flips to underpaid rather than completed.
• No credits are awarded. The PAYG bucket does not move, the subscription does not activate.
• The transaction metadata records the expected USD, paid USD, and detection timestamp.
• Admin review is required to decide between partial credit (proportional to what was paid) and full refund. There is no automatic resolution — the call depends on the gap size and the user's intent.
• Email support@validemailchecker.com with your transaction hash and a short note about what you sent. We resolve underpaid transactions on a case-by-case basis.

The reason VEC does not auto-credit partial purchases: gaming the system. Without a hard floor on payment amount, a bad actor could send a few percent of the invoice and try to walk away with most of the credits. The manual review keeps that closed off while still being reasonable for honest mistakes.

Overpayment

If you accidentally send more than the invoice asked for (extra zero, wrong decimal, paying a $50 invoice with $55 worth of LTC), the excess is converted to additional credits at the same USD-to-credit ratio as the original purchase. A 10% overpayment on a 5,000-credit pack means you get roughly 5,500 credits. No money refund — the resolution is credit, not cash.

Why credits and not refund: crypto refunds are operationally messy. We would need your wallet address to send funds back, the exchange rate has likely moved since you paid, and network fees would eat a chunk on the way out. Crediting the overpayment at the original rate is faster, cleaner, and keeps your value at the same purchasing power.

Common causes of mismatches

• Network fee confusion. Some wallets deduct the network fee from the transfer amount rather than adding it. If you typed the invoice amount and your wallet sent (invoice − fee), the receiver gets less than expected.
• Exchange-rate drift. CoinPayments locks the crypto amount for a short window. If you paid an hour after generation, the USD-equivalent may have shifted enough to trip the 1% tolerance.
• Wrong decimals. Sending 0.005 BTC instead of 0.05 BTC is a 10x undershoot — and the most common high-value underpayment we see.
• Multiple sends. Sending in two batches sometimes lands one batch in time and one too late. The second batch may not be associated with the original invoice.