If your gem purchase was declined, failed, or the gems have not appeared in your balance, this article covers the cause and the fix for each payment method, plus the account conditions that can block a purchase before payment is even attempted.

Card payments are processed by Stripe, and most declines come down to incorrect billing details, insufficient funds, or your bank blocking the charge. Separately, BOXED is not available at all in Michigan, Washington, Louisiana, and South Carolina, so accounts cannot be used from those states and no payment method works there. Crypto purchases credit only after the required number of network confirmations, so send the correct asset on the correct network to the correct address and allow time. Duplicate charges typically reverse on their own within 3 to 5 business days. A negative gem balance, a locked account, or a regional restriction can also block a purchase.

Card payments on BOXED are handled by Stripe. When a card is declined, the decision is made by your bank, and Stripe passes on a generic reason for security purposes. The most common causes are:

Repeated failed attempts in a short period can trigger an additional temporary block from your bank, so leave a little time between tries rather than retrying immediately.

BOXED is not available in Michigan, Washington, Louisiana, and South Carolina. This is a block on the platform as a whole rather than a restriction on one payment method, so accounts cannot be used from those states at all. There is no alternative route: crypto, gift codes, and Skinsback do not work from those states either, and our team cannot make an exception on an individual account.

If you believe you are seeing this message in error and you are not in one of those states, check whether a VPN, proxy, or corporate network is routing your connection through one of them, then try again with it turned off. Full detail on this and on "action not permitted" errors is in Regional availability & "action not permitted" errors.

Crypto purchases succeed when three things are right: the correct asset, the correct network, and the correct address. Sending on the wrong network or to the wrong address is the most common failure, and funds sent that way generally cannot be recovered by anyone, including us. Copy and paste the address rather than typing it, and check the first and last characters before you confirm.

After you send, the transaction must reach the required number of network confirmations before your gems credit. Confirmation counts differ by asset:

Until those confirmations land, your transaction is on the blockchain but not yet credited. You can check progress yourself on a block explorer. For ETH, look your transaction up on etherscan.io using your transaction hash.

Conversion rates between crypto and gems refresh every 5 minutes. The rate applied is the one in effect when your transaction is processed, so a small difference between the quoted amount and the gems credited is normal if the market moved while your transaction confirmed.

A duplicate charge usually reverses on its own within 3 to 5 business days, without you needing to do anything. Some banks show the second charge as pending during this period and it drops off when it expires, which is why it can look like a real charge for several days.

If more than 5 business days have passed and both charges have fully settled, please ask to speak to a human and our team will look into it. Have the date, the amount, the last four digits of the card, and a screenshot of the statement line ready.

First check your transaction history in your account, since gems occasionally credit without an obvious on-screen confirmation. If they genuinely are not there, please ask to speak to a human and our team will look into it. Include:

If your missing gems came from a mission, survey, or offer rather than a purchase, that is a different process. See Gem credit didn't post: missions, surveys & offers.

Please ask to speak to a human first. We can usually resolve payment issues faster directly, and our team can see exactly what was charged and what credited. A chargeback typically takes 30 to 90 days to resolve through your bank. What we can refund directly is set out in Refunds: what's refundable.

Your card was most likely declined because of incorrect billing details, insufficient available funds, or your bank blocking the charge. Re-check every field against your statement and try once more, and if it declines again, ask your bank whether they are blocking the transaction. If your bank confirms the charge is not being blocked at their end, you can try a different card or purchase with crypto instead.

If you paid with crypto and have no gems yet, the transaction is most likely still waiting on network confirmations. BTC needs 2 confirmations and ETH, USDC, and USDT each need 14. Check your transaction hash on a block explorer, using etherscan.io for ETH. If the required confirmations have landed and the gems still have not, please ask to speak to a human with your TXID and our team will look into it.

A double charge normally reverses by itself within 3 to 5 business days, so in most cases nothing is required from you. If both charges have settled and more than 5 business days have gone by, ask to speak to a human with the date, amount, and card details and our team will look into it.

No, gems cannot be purchased from Michigan, Washington, Louisiana, or South Carolina, because BOXED is not available in those states at all. The block covers the whole platform rather than a single payment method, so crypto, gift codes, and Skinsback are not workarounds and accounts cannot be used from those states. If you are not in one of those states and still see the restriction, check whether a VPN or proxy is routing your connection through one of them.

No, gems cannot be credited before the required network confirmations complete, because confirmation is handled by the blockchain rather than by BOXED. The wait is normally short for BTC and a little longer for ETH, USDC, and USDT, and the credit happens automatically once the threshold is met.

Slightly fewer gems can be credited because crypto conversion rates refresh every 5 minutes and the rate applied is the one in effect when your transaction is processed rather than when you sent it. If the difference looks larger than a normal market movement, please ask to speak to a human with your TXID and our team will look into it.