Your payouts from Shopify Payments are on hold while we review your account

Payments + Shipping & Fulfilment

Topic summary

Merchants are experiencing unexpected payment holds from Shopify Payments, often without prior notification. The holds typically occur mid-month during active sales periods, creating immediate cash flow problems for bills, suppliers, and payroll.

Common Issues:

  • Holds implemented without advance email notification
  • Support provides 24-72 hour timeframes that frequently extend to weeks
  • Conflicting error messages (bank issues vs. account review)
  • No clear timeline or status updates during review process

Support Experience:

  • Many describe support as unhelpful or “robotic”
  • Agents often lack information about review status
  • Some merchants open multiple tickets before receiving updates
  • Review durations range from several days to over a month (one case since mid-March 2024)

Merchant Frustrations:

  • Verification should occur at account creation, not after establishing sales history
  • Lack of communication is considered unprofessional and unethical
  • Some merchants filing BBB and FTC complaints
  • Business operations severely impacted without access to funds

Resolutions:

  • Several merchants eventually had holds lifted after persistent support contact
  • Timeframes varied significantly with no consistent pattern
  • Experienced users recommend using multiple payment processors (PayPal mentioned) to avoid complete fund freezes
Summarized with AI on October 27. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Is this a joke or something? Right in the middle of the month when I’m getting constant sales?

They have frozen my payouts right in the middle of the month now I can’t do anything and I have bills to pay. I reached out to support and they said they sent an email, which of course I didn’t receive. If they’re doing a review they need to get on it ASAP. I’ve been on this platform for a year now and this has never happened to me, I don’t know why you need to review the account now. when you can just do it at the beginning when I opened my account?

I tried to contact the support group, and guess what? nothing worked, they all sound like robots and no one can do anything apparently when they are the ones that put the restriction in the first place, cause that makes a lot of sense.

They told me 24 - 72 hours and I would hear at least something from them, lets’s see what happens!

2

I’m currently experiencing the same issues with no email. Rest assured you’re not the only one. I just spoke to support via chat and they didn’t give me a time frame. It’s really a inconvenience as the hold occurs the day before payout. Shopify needs to fix this issue as they could have verified any accounts / documents needed.

3

Hi there, @anis2 !,

Welcome to the Community! Definitely a great place to gather some input regarding anything about the platform!

I definitely hear and feel your frustrations regarding this matter. I understand that this hold is not something ideal regarding your business funds but please take comfort that these reviews are very common and not be taken in a negative light. Our internal teams are constantly doing reviews to simply ensure everybody involved is abiding by all parameters set by all partners involved.

I understand that you have spoken to our internal team already and was informed to check your emails regarding this matter. We ask that you check the account owner email inbox as well as your spam folders for this message.

Moreover, you also mentioned a timeframe provided by our team so I suggest to hold tight as a response is coming. As always, we appreciate your patience and understanding regarding our processes here on the platform.

I also attached this help document that provides you with other options in regards to your payment gateways so you can provide other options for your customers to complete their purchases since one is currently on hold.

4

Hi there, @amongstfrnds !

Welcome to the Community as well! Definitely a great place to gather some input regarding anything about the platform.

I am glad that you have also had a conversation with our support team regarding this matter. As you have mentioned, you already provided what was needed so it is just a matter of waiting now. As soon as they can, they will provide a response for you moving forward.

I urge you to also visit this help document so you can provide other ways for your customes to complete their purchases since Shopify Payments is on hold.

We truly appreciate your patience and understanding regarding this matter.

5

Shopify in general should do this when you first make an account with them, it would save them so much time, on top we won’t be needing to contact support at all.

6

I’m still able to accept payments. It’s just a hold on my account now and I have not received a response in 24hrs.

7

exactly is a huge waste of time. Like how are we supposed to explain that Shopify held our money to Suppliers? or even my Credit card company?

8

This is a good attempt to remedy the situation @Daniel_41 but the best way would be if @Shopify would be more pro active in making sure all accounts are verified before receiving any money would be the better answer.

1 Like
9

Hi Shopify has had done the same to my payments for near on a month as well as Paypal. Both businesses it would appear are into a money grab. Shopify say the pending balance is mine however as I have not received payment for the orders I have been refunding the customers and Shopify has stopped this from happening. I no longer can pay my account with Paypal so I put up a debit card and they can’t process that for my page fees. I have had to place my account on the $9 a month plan and working on making another page that will be using payment options from companies that are from my country so they have laws to abide by. I can not suggest strongly enough if you are with Shopify running a cart that you seriously should look to have an alternative page set up with alternative hosting. Cart 2 Cart is easy to use and copy your page to another platform for if or when you get hit with Shopify’s antics.

10

It just looks like a big scam to me if you wanted to verify an account or review account you should have been just ask those document when you starting up the account but they will wait till you are making money then they can freeze your account and put your payout on hold..if Spotify banks partner is the problem then I guess they are not fit to be an e-commerce platform they should just shut down you rather making thing difficult for small business owner who are relying on Shopify I think everyone should stop using them

2 Likes
11

It turns out that in America no proof is needed per say a business can take people to court for supposed copyright or in my case a trademark breach. It took over 2 months before I was sent legal letters along with 260 other business about this breach. Shopify says they can not rule on if a trademark has been breached this is the courts job, however they did take an image down that in was not a breach. I was sent a blank form as a summons to court thus there is no court case or it is going to happen without my knowledge. The courts did put a hold on all money that American financial intuitions process and without either a court order or a letter from the dicks making this ■■■■ up I will never get money released from Stripe or Paypal. I have managed to switch to a payment gateway here in my country but this does cost more as Shopify takes 2% of every sale. I have started to move my web page to an Australian host so I do not have to deal with another country. As we are not bound by American law in my country I can do nothing, if I was to contact the American legal system this will open me up to their legal system. I did get a letter asking for 8kusd. It is without a doubt new way to scam people for a lot of money using the legal system with lies. I suggest if you are not American you find a payment system that is not American based for payments and give Paypal a wide birth as well. Shopify use Stripe as the payment gateway.

12

Every thing was running fine and suddenly i got a notification that the payouts are on hold now while they are reviewing my account . like whats wrong i have done ? how i have submitted every document they asked me , not a prior email i got before they made an attempt to hold my payouts !

13

This is happening to me but i have no response. I really need my payments lifted

14

Did you ever get this issue fixed? We are having the same issue at the moment.

15

Hello, did you get this fixed?

16

Since the middle of March 2024 i have not gotten any payouts, any email about it. I have been using SHOPIFY since 2020 and this is the first time. I just need to check some payouts and I found that last one was in the middle on March 2024. Frankly this is bad. I was told, after chatting with AI (not useful at all) and maybe with a real person, that soon I will be reached by someone via email Let’ s see but I was very surprised about it. I will keep you informed about it.

17

Firstly, I want to express my deep appreciation for Kriss on the support team. Their patience and dedication while we were dealing with our bank was commendable. However, it’s clear however that the team needs more resources and training to provide timely assistance.

Our payments froze on the 28th of March (2 weeks ago). We were on with the support team for 2 hours yesterday as the error said the issue was with our bank on one page but said, “Your payouts from Shopify Payments are on hold while we review your account” On another, the first support colleague was frankly put useless and assured me the issue was with our bank… we contacted the bank they said of course the problem isn’t with them that’s just not how banking tech works..

Anyway we shared this with the Second support Tech (Kriss) who was great but it literally took 1.5 hours to discover it was a standard review from Their banking partners and has nothing to do with my bank after going through 1 support agent entirely, who assured me the issue was with my bank, I had to send chat logs from my bank to prove I had asked them there was no fault on their end in numerous specificly elaborate ways.

Shopify your team needs to be equipped to help on these matters and your in-system messaging needs ALOT more clarity for us you can’t say in an email it’s an issue with your bank then on another page say it’s a review it’s clearly confusing not only for us currently starved of vital funds for 2 weeks but it’s also confusing your own support team.

we’ve been told the payment should begin in 3 working days or when the review is complete; when I asked when the review would be complete I wasn’t given an answer other than “I can’t confirm the days when the review will be completed since this will be handled by our banking partners during business hours. Nothing to worry as I already sent them a notification that you follow-up about this matter.”

as of this morning we received another email that confuses the matter regarding the payment that has been marked “in transit” since the second of april, the email says:

“Your payout couldn’t be deposited because your bank was unable to process it. In most cases, you need to contact your bank to resolve this issue and then retry your payout.
Your payouts will be on hold until you resolve this issue.”

once again this is not helpful in anyway should we be speaking to support again? as somthing clearly has changed since we spoke yesterday or do we leave things until tuesday and continue to starve our business of a third week of primary income???

For the record, we had received absolutely zero notice about any form of review until we proactively contacted support & investigated the matter ourselves.

Please, please Shopify we urge you to do better in this matter that is so very critical to the operation of so many small businesses using your platform.

1 Like
18

Did you solve the issue? About me since 3 days ago I have not received any communications. That is very bad. They cannot stop making the payouts without notifying this to their clients. This makes me think that something is going on. Yesterday I tried again to use their service but no answer at all. I will do it later again.

19

It all seems like a shopify money glitch where they just take our money, it’s kind messsed up but my account was on hold as of the 10th and they said about 5 days and they’ll retry the payout so i guess i’ll have to wait

20

Not just yet we will wait until Tuesday(3 days) then we will go back to the support team as they had told us 3 business days on the chat but it’s not a great time