What if a payment fails?
In every case, your money is either delivered to the right service or refunded to your bank. Throwda's actual failure rate is small, but every system has edge cases — here's exactly what we do in each one, so you don't have to wonder.
Your bank declines the charge
1. The charge fails (most common)
Paystack tries to debit your bank, your bank says no — usually because of insufficient balance, a daily limit, or your bank's own fraud check. Nothing has been bought, nothing has been moved. You'll see a message like 'Payment failed — please try again or re-link your payment method.' Just retry, or use the link bank command to add a different account.
Money taken, provider call rejected
2. We charged you, but the provider rejected the request
Paystack debited your bank successfully, but VTPass / eBills / your school's portal rejected the request immediately (wrong meter number, invalid IUC, school not enrolled, etc.). When this happens we call Paystack's refund API right away — your money returns to the same bank account, usually within minutes, occasionally up to 24 hours depending on your bank. You get a WhatsApp message confirming the refund. You don't have to do anything.
Provider says 'pending'
3. The provider takes the money but doesn't confirm
Sometimes the provider's API responds with 'pending' instead of a clean success or failure — usually because the upstream telco or DisCo is slow. Our requery worker takes over: it polls every 5 to 60 seconds for up to 30 minutes. If the transaction eventually succeeds, you get your receipt. If it permanently fails, we automatically refund you via Paystack. You don't have to refresh anything or send a follow-up message — sit tight, the worker will message you when it knows.
Network drops while you're entering your PIN
4. Your network drops mid-transaction
If your WhatsApp drops while you're typing your PIN, the bot keeps your session alive in 'awaiting PIN' state for 10 minutes. Reconnect, finish typing your PIN, and the transaction continues. If you don't want to continue, send 0 to cancel or menu to go home — no charge happens until you confirm.
Throwda is down
5. The bot itself is offline (very rare)
If Throwda is down when Paystack is trying to call our webhook, Paystack retries delivery for 72 hours. When the bot recovers, our HQ reconciliation worker runs daily and catches any orphan transactions — it posts the matching journal entries and confirms with the customer. Even in the worst case, no payment is left in limbo for more than 24 hours after we recover.
The bottom line
In every scenario, your money is either delivered to the right service orrefunded to your bank. Throwda never holds your money in between, which means it cannot get ‘stuck’ in our system. Read more about why we built Throwda this way →
Something still wrong?
If you believe a payment failed and you weren't refunded, send us your transaction reference (the TW-XXXX code on your receipt) at support@throwda.com or message us on WhatsApp. We respond within 24 hours.
Last updated April 2026