EACH and EVERY order I get the pay out by SHOPIFY is cut due to RESERVED FUNDS; the funds SHOPIFY took so far from me SHOULD BE RETURN ON 10/11/22 but THIS IS NOT FOR SURE (based on a hidden statement)!!! because everything is at Shopify discretion including HOW TO HANDLE their CUSTOMERS’ MONEY. For ex the last order placed yesterday; this is my husband’s patient and she is wealthy; she purchased 3 products for 185$ but Shopify pays 145$. No explanation why, low risk of fraud listed. It is getting very frustrating as customer service cannot explain why is this abuse. Meanwhile a week ago SHOPIFY billed me for an app that I downloaded for 1 month free trial, I deleted the app before due date but SHOPIFY sent me bill FOR 1ST month.
Hi @dga25 , thank you for sharing your recent experience here for other merchants to be aware of. I can definitely understand your concern if a payout reserve has been placed on your account and hopefully I can share some additional insight into why these decisions might be made.
Before I do, I want to clarify that I am unable to directly review your merchant account or open tickets through our community forums since I am unable to authenticate your account. I can share some general information though which will hopefully help ease your mind.
I can see from your original message that you are aware of when the payout hold should be released and that based on the amount held your payout reserve looks to be about 25%, is that correct?
Payout reserves are commonly requested by the banking partners that power Shopify Payments as a way to mitigate risk for both the merchant and the payment gateway. If you decided to move forward in fulfilling some high risk orders or had a huge volume of orders outside your norm this could be the reason why the reserve was requested.
Almost all payment gateways have the ability to place a payout hold or reserve if deemed necessary and that is agreed upon in the terms of service for the gateway itself.
The reason this policy is in place is because payment gateways want to avoid chargebacks at all costs. The more businesses that receive chargebacks, the lower the trust is between the payment gateway that processed that order, the merchant account that accepted the order and the banking partner that powers the payment gateway.
The payout reserve is designed to maintain a pool of funds to cover any chargebacks that could be created on an order within a specific window of time. When a reserve is activated, that reserve will take a portion of all sales during the reserve window that have been processed on the same payment gateway.
You can activate an alternate payment gateway if you so choose and this would allow you to avoid having the reserve on any additional orders.
You also mentioned an app charge for an app you removed from your store. App billing fees are handled by the app developers directly and the payments are processed through Shopify. You can contact the app developer directly through the app store or contact our live support to submit a request for a refund on that billing fee.
thanks for the response; the volume of orders is low (we are start up) and the funds are withheld even for orders listed by SHOPIFY as low risk of fraud.So Shopify is keeping fund even for orders they consider low risk.This in my opinion is not acceptable; no explanation to us as of why. What gateway would you recommend to avoid these issues? I noticed that is what is suggested-to change the gateway.Thanks
Thanks for the answer. I understand your explanation for medium-high risk orders; however SHOPIFY retains 25% of payouts for orders that are low risk.What alternate payment gateway do you advise? Thanks.
I’d be happy to share some suggestions for alternate payment gateway options for your business. What country is your business located in? You can view our entire list of supported gateways on this page here: Online Payment Gateways and Payment Providers. If you are based in North America, or other supported country I can recommend looking into:
For the payout reserve, you are correct that the reserve is in place on even low risk orders. If your business has fulfilled a high risk order then the business itself may be considered a high risk in general. This is one reason why the payout reserve may have been put in place on all orders, even “low risk” ones.
It is important to note that as a newer business large payment gateways will generally have lower trust until you have a proven record of sales and commitments made with them. If you do fulfill high risk orders, even through other payment gateways, you may still end up with a reserve in place. That’s not guaranteed, but I want to ensure that you are making the decision with as much information as possible.