Upright the Seven of Coins is read as patience and the long view on effort not yet paid off; reversed, as impatience, poor return, or work abandoned just short of its result.
The card sits at an unusual point of disagreement between its three main sources. Waite's printed keywords favor patience rewarded; the Golden Dawn's Book T title, Success Unfulfilled, and Crowley's Thoth reading of outright Failure, favor an effort that does not pay off; and the picture itself, a gardener pausing rather than either celebrating or giving up, supports either conclusion depending on what the reader assumes happens next. A reader who wants a single settled meaning for this card is choosing between sources that were never in full agreement to begin with.
Most contemporary practice resolves the tension positionally: the pause the gardener takes is read as a moment for honest assessment rather than as an omen either way, and the card's real instruction is to stop and evaluate before the surrounding cards decide whether the harvest comes in. This reading, incidentally, keeps faith with the oldest layer of the tradition, the pre-Golden Dawn cartomancers who read a bare seven of coins simply as a matter still in progress, its outcome not yet determined by the card itself.