A real Bitcoin TXID is not a confirmed payment: 0 confirmations and RBF explained

Your wallet shows an incoming payment. An explorer finds the transaction. But at 0 confirmations, it has not been included in a block. Explorers show mempool transactions too.

Replace-by-Fee (RBF) allows an eligible conflicting transaction to replace an unconfirmed one under a node’s replacement rules. It is commonly used to increase fees, but a replacement can also change who gets paid. Acceptance and confirmation are not guaranteed.

The sender does not need access to your wallet or seed phrase. They are replacing their own unconfirmed spend, not withdrawing confirmed BTC from your wallet.

RBF is only one reason a 0-confirmation payment may not settle. A transaction can remain unconfirmed or be dropped from individual nodes’ mempools. Being dropped does not itself cancel it.

Once included in the current blockchain, a transaction cannot be replaced through ordinary RBF. Chain reorganizations remain a separate risk; additional confirmations reduce that risk.

An explorer’s “RBF disabled” label is not a guarantee. Bitcoin Core 28.0 made full-RBF the default, subject to replacement rules. There is no single global mempool.

Check the recipient, amount and confirmations in your own wallet. Choose a confirmation threshold appropriate to the payment’s value and risk.

Would “Payment detected, not yet confirmed” be a clearer wallet label than simply showing an incoming balance?

Sources: https://developer.bitcoin.org/devguide/payment_processing.html and https://bitcoincore.org/en/releases/28.0/