Reserve & Payout Policy
Last updated August 29, 2026
This policy answers one question: between your client paying and the money reaching your bank, who is holding it, how much do we keep back, and how long do we delay it?
The whole policy, in four lines
- SettleMe keeps back 0% of a payment as a reserve.
- SettleMe adds 0 days of hold on top of Stripe's payout schedule.
- If Stripe blocks a payment or a payout, you hear it from us in writing within 24 hours, from a named person.
- An appeal gets a first response from a human within 3 business days.
1. Who holds your money
SettleMe is the merchant of record for card payments taken through the client portal. Your client's payment settles into SettleMe's Stripe balance, and Stripe transfers it on to your connected Stripe Express account in the same operation, less our platform fee. That is real custody, and we would rather say so plainly than describe ourselves as a payment processor we are not.
From that point the money sits in your own Stripe account and pays out to the bank details you gave Stripe. SettleMe cannot reach into that bank account and cannot pull the money back out of it.
2. Our reserve is 0%
There is no reserve, no rolling reserve and no risk hold. No percentage is kept back against future chargebacks, no payment is parked pending review, and there is no volume at which any of that begins. SettleMe keeps back 0% — on every plan, for every business, in every country we serve, with no threshold and no clause reserving us the right to change our mind case by case.
That figure is not marketing copy. It is a constant in our source code and this page reads it from there, so the policy and the software cannot quote different numbers.
3. The only timing is Stripe's
SettleMe adds 0 days of delay to a payout. What decides when you are paid is the payout schedule Stripe sets on your account — including the waiting period Stripe applies before a newly verified account's first payout, which is longer than the schedule that follows it.
We will not promise you a faster payout. That timing belongs to Stripe and we cannot shorten it, so a speed claim from us would be a promise we do not control. We publish the dates Stripe gives, and where they come from, instead.
Your own schedule and your next expected payout are in your Stripe Express dashboard, which you can open from Settings → Payments.
4. If Stripe blocks a payment or a payout
Stripe can hold a payment, pause payouts, or ask for more verification, and it can do that without asking us first. We cannot overturn it. What we can promise is that you never find out by opening a settings page and reading a flag.
- We write to you within 24 hours of learning about it.
- The message gives the reason Stripe stated, which money is affected, and what Stripe needs in order to release it.
- It comes from a named person at SettleMe, at a reply address that reaches them.
If you want to challenge it, reply to that message. A person gives you a first response within 3 business days — a response, not necessarily a resolution: Stripe owns the outcome, we own the answering.
5. Changing these numbers
These numbers are a decision on record, not a setting. Changing one takes a superseding decision published before it takes effect, a new version of this page, and notice to every business it affects. A reserve added quietly, or a clause slipped into the terms between deploys, is exactly the failure this policy exists to prevent.
6. Questions
Anything here you want explained, or an appeal you want to escalate — write to us and a person will answer.