Hello, my shopify payments were disabled a month and half ago due to high number of customer chargebacks. I’m in the EU. I have a negative balance over 5000 USD. I’ve made multiple manual payments for the refunds that take forever to appear in my order transactions and when they do the status is always “pending“(a paypal payment took 21 days to appear in my account)'I’ve received mixed replies from support, saying that my refunds cannot be processed due to the payouts hold. Also have been informed that negative balance needs to be under 5k before it can be processed. What sense does it make to not be able to send money to cover my refunds… Every ticket i send i just keep getting replies that i have a negative balance that needs to be paid. No effort on trying to fix my problem. Sorry for the rant, i’m really frustrated as i keep getting chargebacks and want to fix this but i have a feeling like shopify doesn’t want to help me. If anyone has encountered something similar, please share your experience, thank you!
The “logic loop” happens because Shopify tries to pull refunds from your future payouts, but those payouts are frozen due to your negative balance. Adding money for a single refund doesn’t work because any payment you make is automatically applied to your total debt first. Until your overall balance drops below the risk threshold (the “5k limit”), the system will continue to block all outgoing funds.
You can contact Shopify Support to provide wire transfer details so you can clear the entire negative balance at once. This is the fastest way to lift the hold.
Hope this helps!
Hey @adrianmisetic, when Payments is disabled for chargebacks, payouts are frozen and refunds can stay pending until your negative balance drops below Shopify’s threshold (around -$5k). Manual payments do work, but they can take weeks to settle, especially via PayPal.
Try to reduce the negative balance as fast as possible (bank transfer is usually fastest) and stop new orders to avoid more chargebacks. Hope that helps!
sorry you are going through this. I know this is very stressful.
you should know that when Shopify Payments is disabled, refunds and payouts get very slow.
although it’s normal, even though it feels very unfair.
And about the negative balance
Shopify usually wants the balance to go below $5,000 before they process more things.
That is why support keeps saying the same thing.
The reason refunds stay pending is because payouts are on hold.
So even if you send money, the system takes time to match it.
so you can try this maybe it helps
1.Keep making manual payments to reduce the balance
2.Use one payment method if possible (bank card works better than PayPal)
3.Ask support to escalate your ticket to the payments team (this is important)
Sadly, regular support cannot fix this fast.
Only the payments/risk team can.
You are not alone. Many EU merchants had this problem before.
It takes time, but once the balance is lower, things usually move again.
I hope this helps a bit.
Wish you good luck
I’ve paid 3 days ago the full amount that was needed for my negative balance+refunds processing(€18,648.00 EUR at the time) and gotten a confirmation from shopify that they received the money day after(paid invoice). it didn’t process right away so the total balance jumped to around 20k as there were some lost chargebacks.
But now i noticed new refunds come at the top of my order transactions in shopify, with the date being yesterday, but they are from the past, some 20 days old. on the order it just says that X amount will be deducted from next payout, there are around 100 of them, and my payout balance is now -€16,527.07, when i expected it to be lowered to 2k.
The manual payment adjustment i sent is still not visible in Shopify.
Does anyone know what could this mean?
For this kind of refund/payout-hold loop, I would document it as a customer-risk timeline, not only a balance problem.
The packet I’d keep ready:
- current negative balance
- manual payment dates, amounts, and proof of receipt
- which refunds are still pending
- which older orders were added retroactively
- open chargebacks created after refunds got stuck
- support ticket IDs and answers received
- the exact ask: how Shopify is applying the payment and when refunds will process
The important point is to show that unresolved refund processing can create more chargebacks, not reduce risk.