Transaction basics

A wallet is a digital place where you can store cryptocurrency coins and tokens. A wallet address is a randomly generated combination of digits and letters associated with a particular wallet.

What does a wallet address look like?

• Bitcoin wallet addresses can begin with “1,” “3,” “bc1,” or “bc1p” — for example, bc1qqsrt233myxpgj4zdya7ty9z404d78vhekmynw5.
• Ethereum wallet addresses begin with “0x” — for instance, 0x95233290dd7278aa3ddd389cc1e1d178cc4bkoe5.

After you sign up for a wallet, you can find the addresses corresponding to certain currencies in your wallet profile. Still looking for the right solution? We partner with reliable crypto wallets: Exodus, Coinomi, Ledger, ZenGo, and many others. Choose the one that suits you best!

First things first. To initiate any activity on the blockchain, you need to set up a crypto wallet. The crypto wallet is an essential part of your crypto activity. It must be a reliable, secure, and convenient solution to send and receive cryptocurrency.

In our blog, using the example of Bitcoin, we explained how to choose and register a crypto wallet. Follow these simple steps to set up your wallet in a matter of minutes.

In any transaction, there is always a sender and a recipient. On Changelly the recipient address is the wallet address where you will receive the currency after an exchange or purchase is completed. For example, if you want to get Ether (ETH), you should specify an ETH wallet address in the recipient field, and Changelly will send coins to this address once the transaction is completed.

In general, the recipient’s wallet address is the customer’s address to which Changelly will send coins once the transaction is completed. Specify only the wallet address to which you definitely have access.

Changelly provides non-reusable addresses only. The floating-rate address should be used within 3 hours; 15 minutes (20 minutes in case of BTC, XMR, LTC, DCR, EOS, GAS, BNB, VET) for fixed-rate addresses. If you make a payment later or reuse the address, we will either have to process the transaction manually or make a refund if the pay-in amount covers the network commission. The ETA for resolving such cases is 3–5 business days, but usually they’re solved faster.

A hash is a unique identifier of a blockchain transaction. It acts as a record or proof that the transaction was conducted. Usually, a hash is a combination of digits and lowercase letters (uppercase in the case of XRP). A hash is assigned to every payment in cryptocurrency; you can find it in the transaction details in your wallet. It looks like this:

1. On the main page, select the currency you would like to exchange, set the amount, and pick the currency you would like to get. Then, click “Exchange now.”
2. Next, verify the currencies and amounts and check the fees by clicking on “Transaction details.” Finally, enter the recipient’s wallet address where you would like to receive your funds after the exchange.
3. Check out all the transaction information: amounts, network and exchange fees, the exchange rate, and the recipient’s address. If everything looks fine, click “Confirm & make payment.”
4. Go to the wallet or other storing service, where you store the currency you’re going to exchange and from there send the assets to the address provided by Changelly. You can copy the address and paste it in your wallet or scan a QR code corresponding to the Changelly address with your wallet app. Pay attention to the time you have to send funds. In case you don’t send the funds on time, the transaction won’t go through.
5. Wait for your transaction to be completed. It takes about 5-20 minutes on average.
6. You can also swap your assets using our iOS or Android app. The general principle is pretty much the same, even simpler. Please check guide for iOS and guide for Android to learn more.

The fixed exchange rate implies that the user will receive the same amount as quoted initially when creating the transaction, since the quoted price is guaranteed for all the exchange time. To get the funds successfully exchanged at a fixed rate the customer must make sure the amount Changelly receives is the same as initially indicated by the customer and that the incoming transfer appeared on the blockchain within the set time (15-20 minutes depending on the chosen input currency). 

When the floating rate is chosen, the final sum might change depending on market conditions. Once your exchange is completed, you might receive a slightly different amount if there were any rate fluctuations on the market while Changelly was processing your exchange. If the amount we receive from you for floating rate exchange differs from the initially indicated, the exchange will go through, unless the received amount is lower than the minimum.

There are three main rules to follow to ensure your transaction is successfully completed:

• Make sure that the amount we receive from you is right. If you send less money than required, you won’t be able to pay the missing amount later. If we receive an incorrect fixed-rate amount or less than the minimum amount, then the transaction may fail.
• Make sure that you send money to the right address provided by Changelly and the blockchain that must be used to send this particular data to us. Pay attention to the protocol of the currency, which is displayed in the drop-down menu next to the currency’s ticker (e.g., USDT [Omni] and USDT20 [ERC-20 token]).
• Alongside the address, Changelly may provide you with a memo/message/tag on the “Send funds” page. If that is the case, make sure to enter it when you send your coins for exchange. If you forget it or if there is any error or typo in your memo, the payment won’t be processed automatically, and our team will need some details from you, so please get in touch with us as soon as possible. A memo/message/tag, a.k.a. an extra ID, is needed for such currencies as XRP, XEM, XLM, EOS, BNB, etc.

Please bear in mind that on Changelly, ARRR does not require a memo, so the memo field must be blank. If you enter any memo, the transaction will be undetected on our end. If this is the case, please get in touch with our team so that we can fix it.

During the transaction process, you can see the following statuses:

• The Created status means we created your request and gave it a unique Changelly transaction ID.
• The Waiting for payment status means that we are awaiting your payment.
• The Hold status means we require a verification process since our risk-scoring system flagged your transaction.
• The Confirming status means that we are waiting for enough confirmations on the blockchain.
• The Exchanging status means that we sent your funds to the exchange platform.
• The Sending status means we’ve exchanged your money and sent it to your receiving address.
• The Finished status means that your transaction is completed successfully, and your funds are already in your wallet.
• The Failed status means that your transaction was declined for some reason. Please check your inbox for more info or feel free to reach out to our support team to learn more.
• The Not paid status means you created a request but didn’t send money to our wallet.
• The Expired status means you didn’t send money (or did it too late) when making a fixed-rate transaction.

If your transaction got stuck in any of the above-mentioned stages, find the solution in the troubleshooting section.

Your transaction did not get enough confirmations. Pay attention to the notifications displayed on the processing page when choosing a payment currency. If this currency is characterized by a large number of confirmations, then you will see the corresponding notification.

If there are zero confirmations for the exchange, the transaction cannot progress to the next stage. We cannot influence the process and speed it up because it is not us but the network that confirms pay-in. If you want your transactions to be processed faster in the future, don’t skimp on fees. The higher the network fee you set for your transfer, the faster the transfer is confirmed in the blockchain.

You can always check the average transaction fee here or here for BTC or ETH, respectively.

Changelly transaction ID is not the same thing as transaction ID or hash. We assign an ID to each transaction in order to track it in our system.

To find your Changelly transaction ID, go to the history page and click on the transaction. Your Changelly txID will be at the top of the page:

If you face any problem with your transaction, please contact our support team and indicate your Changelly transaction ID.

Once confirmed, a crypto transfer is irreversible. It means that if we’ve already sent the resulting currency to your wallet, we can’t cancel the transfer. If the funds haven’t been sent yet, there’s still a little chance a transaction can be stopped. If you made a mistake with some transaction data and you need a transaction stopped, contact our support team asap, so that they check if anything can be done. And please double-check (or even triple-check) the recipient’s address and all other transaction data beforehand.

If you have just initiated a transaction on Changelly and don’t want to proceed, just don’t send money to the Changelly wallet address. This transaction will expire automatically. If you choose a floating rate, then you can create a new one at any convenient time. If the rate is fixed, then wait until the old transaction expires and create a new one.

All transactions take time to be processed (usually 5–30 minutes, blockchain confirmation not included). Given the volatility of cryptocurrencies, the exchange rate is subject to change during the processing time, which means the final rate may be slightly different than expected. Note that this rule applies only to transactions with floating rates. If you would rather avoid such situations, use the fixed-rate option.

No, you can’t. If the address has already been used, then you cannot send funds to it again. You need to go to the main page and create a new transaction so that the system gives you a new pay-in address.

The fixed-rate address is available only within 15–20 minutes after initiating the transaction. The floating-rate address is available for 3 hours. Everything paid later can only be processed manually according to the current market conditions. Please contact our support team if you happen to send any funds to an expired address.