Why is my payment account on hold despite submitting business details?

Shopify Discussion

Topic summary

A merchant’s Shopify Payments account was placed on hold just before their product launch, despite recently fixing payment issues. The system requests additional business details, but uploaded files appear to fail processing—nothing happens after upload and the same message reappears.

Shopify’s Response:

  • Verification reviews typically take 1-3 business days, potentially longer with high volume or if additional information is needed
  • Merchants should monitor all email folders (inbox, spam, junk) for team communications
  • The hold banner will disappear once review completes and payouts are enabled

Document Requirements:

Photo ID:

  • Must be standard government-issued (driver’s license, passport, federal ID)
  • Requires actual photograph (not scans), high-quality, color, all edges visible
  • Name and birth date must match Shopify Payments account exactly
  • Cannot be expired; passport only requires front page

Address Verification:

  • Personal name and address must be visible and match account details
  • Utility bills/bank statements generally cannot be older than 6 months
  • Cannot reuse documents (e.g., driver’s license for both ID and address verification)

If upload issues persist via the secure banner, merchants should reply directly to their existing support ticket for specialized assistance.

Summarized with AI on November 5. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hey!

We’re launching our drop in a few hours. We fixed Shopify payments yesterday and today, we got this message: “Your Shopify Payments account is on hold”. Have contacted support a few hours ago and still no answer. The weird thing is that there’s another message: “To continue accepting payments, you need to submit some additional details about your business.” But when we upload our files nothing happens and it just comes back like it was never uploaded again later on.

2

Hi, @LAVY .

Welcome to the Shopify Community.

Our team may request certain verification documents for your Shopify Payments account. The team may take up to 1-3 business days to review all details and your account thoroughly, in order to completely verify your account. However, this could take longer depending on the volume of work or if any additional information is required from the team. Therefore, I would request you to keep an eye out for any emails from our team and reply back directly to that email for further clarification. Please be sure to check your inbox, spam folder, junk email, etc.

We understand that this is important for your store’s functionality and assure you that we are working on this to ensure the review is completed as quickly as possible. Once the review is done and payouts are enabled, you will no longer see the banner regarding the hold on the home page of your store admin.

When submitting documents for verification, you’ll want to ensure the following:

For Government-Issued Photo I.D

  • The ID must be a standard government-issued photo ID. Commonly we accept driver’s licenses, passports, and federal identity cards.
  • It must be a photograph taken using a camera, for ex. with a cellphone. We cannot accept scans or copies of IDs. The photo provided must be high quality, clear, and in colour. We cannot verify with greyscale or scanned images.
  • All edges should be visible (nothing cut out of the picture). No information can be redacted or covered.
  • There cannot be any watermarks over the images, and they should not be edited in any way.
  • It must completely match the name on the Shopify Payments account.
  • The date of birth on file must match the provided ID.
  • If you provide one file where you’ve included images of the front and back of your ID, it will often cause problems with verification. Where front and back are required, we will need two separate files (one for the image of the front and another file for the image of the back).
  • Only the “front” of a passport is required (the full open page where your photo is), we do not need an image of the back of a passport, but you can provide an image of the signature page if you wish.
  • It must be valid, we cannot accept expired IDs.

For Address Verification Documents

  • Personal name and address must both be visible on the document.
  • The name and address will need to match the information on your Shopify Payments account.
  • Do not cover or blur any of the information on the document.
  • If a driver’s licence was used for the Photo ID request, it cannot be used a second time to verify the personal address.
  • For utility bills and bank account statements, the document generally cannot be older than 6 months.

If you continue to have issues uploading your files via the secure upload banner in your admin, I recommend replying to your existing support ticket as they will be the appropriate team to assist you

3

how long did it take them to help you?