To pay a Bitcoin invoice, you will need a working Bitcoin wallet and some bitcoins to make the purchase. See the instructions for setting up a Bitcoin wallet on Electrum, as well as our guide on buying bitcoins with your Credit or Debit Card.
There are four ways to get the invoice Bitcoin address into your wallet: (1) manually select and copy the Bitcoin address from the CoinGate invoice to your wallet; (2) click the copy button, and paste the invoice Bitcoin address in your wallet; (3) click Pay with Bitcoin on the invoice, which will open up Electrum with the correct invoice Bitcoin address and payment value already inserted in the required fields; (4) scan the QR code with your mobile Bitcoin wallet or with Electrum.
In Electrum and other wallets, you can also include a Description, which will later remind you what you paid for.
If you are making a small purchase, the transaction will be confirmed immediately. Meanwhile, if the transaction is bigger, you may have to wait for it to be confirmed by the Bitcoin network. See the screenshots below.
Seeing either of the two windows below means that you do not need to do anything else – your Bitcoin invoice is paid! Great job – the merchant is notified and will soon process your order.
If you want to pay the Bitcoin invoice value using two or more different wallets or different Transaction IDs, rest assured – this is possible, and please see the part on underpaid orders in the following section.
Three things, really. One, you may accidentally (or purposefully) pay too little. Two, your Bitcoin invoice might expire before or after you make a transaction. Three, you can pay too much. Let us go over all of these scenarios, and what you should do if you are facing any problems.
Most likely, this is the case if you make a transaction, yet the Bitcoin invoice does not switch into confirming/paid state. In the updated invoice (see below on the left) you will see the amount of bitcoins that you sent, as well as the amount that is still left to pay (in the blue box). You should make another transaction to cover the underpaid amount before the invoice expires.
On the other hand, if the invoice expires, you will be displayed a refund form (see the next section on what to do with an expired invoice).
Nevertheless, you should not worry, because your bitcoins will reach us at some time. What you should do is monitor the CoinGate invoice status every once in a while, because the invoice form will update immediately when the transaction is broadcast to the Bitcoin network.
(2) The invoice will remain expired, but you will see your Transaction ID on the Bitcoin invoice. This means that your seller may still accept your late payment, so hold on for a little while, and contact your seller if you have not already.
That is it! These are all of the scenarios that you may face when paying our invoice with Bitcoins. We recommend sticking to Electrum to minimize the risk of expired invoices and underpayments. Refer to our guide here for setting up Electrum. And if you need to buy some bitcoins quickly, use our credit card option for purchases between USD 50 – 5,000 (click here to read our step by step guide on paying with credit / debit cards).
We hope that reading this guide has helped you understand how to pay for a CoinGate invoice with Bitcoin. If it was your first time making a transaction and you found it difficult and tiring – we assure you that the second time will be much much easier.
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