Timeouts & refunds
What happens when a lock fails or a payment arrives late.
Fees, timeouts and confirmation counts on this page are read from the running platform configuration.
What are the deadlines?
The lock is automatic and takes about 1 minute (6 confirmations). Once it is confirmed, the buyer has 90 minutes to pay. The countdown is shown in the trade room.
Deadlines are enforced by a worker that checks them every 10 seconds.
What happens if the seller’s wallet no longer holds the QTC?
The lock cannot be made, so the trade is cancelled and the seller receives a warning. The buyer has sent nothing at that point, so there is nothing to recover.
What happens if the buyer does not pay in time?
The trade moves to Refunding and the buyer receives a warning. The escrow wallet sends the full amount back to the seller’s wallet; no fee is taken. The amount then returns to the offer.
What if a payment arrives late?
If a matching payment is confirmed while a refund is still in progress, the trade moves to Disputed for review. The platform does not automatically refund a trade with a recorded matching payment.
Once a trade is Refunded, the QTC has returned to the seller. The in-app dispute action is unavailable in terminal states. Contact support with the trade ID and payment transaction hash; USDC transfers cannot be reversed by the platform. Do not pay after the countdown reaches zero.
Can the seller pull the QTC back after I paid?
No. Once locked, the QTC is in the escrow wallet, which the seller has no key to — an exported phrase only opens the seller’s own wallet. It leaves escrow in two ways only: to the buyer after a confirmed payment, or back to the seller after a timeout or a dispute decision.