Product Guides

Reserves

Reserves help to ensure there are sufficient funds available in your account to cover unexpected debits, such as chargebacks. The reserve amount is determined based on our assessment of your business, industry and transaction history. If a reserve is active, you can monitor the status directly from your Pin Payments dashboard.

What are reserves?

Reserves are a standard practice in the payments industry. They help to ensure you have sufficient funds to cover debits to your account balance from customer refunds and disputes (chargebacks).

Reserves are governed by a reserve rule, which consists of two key components:

Reserve percentage – The portion of each transaction withheld or ‘reserved’.
Reserve period – The duration the funds are held before being released to your available balance.

Types of reserves

There are two types of reserves, rolling and fixed.

Rolling reserve

A rolling reserve holds a set percentage of funds from each transaction for a specified period (e.g. 30 days). Once this period has passed, the reserved funds are released to your available balance and included in your next transfer.

Example

A 25% rolling reserve, held for 30 days:

Transaction Details	Amount
Sale amount	$100.00
Pin Payments fee (1.6% + 30c)	$1.90
Amount after fee	$98.10
75% available for transfer after 2 days*	$73.58
25% available for transfer after 30 days	$24.53

* dependant on your standard settlement terms

Fixed reserve

A fixed reserve means a set percentage of funds from each transaction is held aside until a future release date. Following the release date being reached, the reserved funds are added to your available balance and included in your next transfer.

Fixed reserves are typically used in situations where there is a heightened risk of chargebacks or refunds occurring at a specific point in time. For example, in event ticket sales, customers may seek refunds if an event is cancelled or significantly altered. A fixed reserve ensures that sufficient funds are available to process potential refunds or chargebacks in such cases.

Reasons for a reserve

Reserves are not applied to all accounts. Where it's assessed there is a meaningful risk of chargebacks from the nature of your business or processing, we may require a reserve to be in place. Some of the reasons include:

Chargeback rates in your industry
Certain industries, such as custom-made products, travel, tourism, consumer services or events can experience higher chargeback rates – when customer expectations differ from what is delivered.
Your historical chargeback rate
A reserve may be applied if a significant number of your transactions are disputed or if your account lacks sufficient funds to cover chargebacks.
Prepayment of goods or services
If you collect payment from customers well before delivering goods or services, we may apply a reserve until we better understand your chargeback and refund rates.
You’re new to Pin Payments
We like to support new businesses, however, in some situations, we may apply a reserve until we gain a clearer understanding of your payment processing activities.

We assess the need for a reserve on a case-by-case basis, with the goal of minimising disruptions to your business while being able to support your processing.

Viewing your reserved funds

You can check the amount being held in reserve anytime from these pages in your Pin Payments dashboard:

Home: Displays the total funds held in reserve and your active reserve rule
Transfers: Shows reserved amounts under the Reserve Held: Total line item.

Releasing reserved funds

Once the reserve period for a transaction has passed, the reserved amount will be released and included in your next funds transfer, represented in the Reserve Released: Total line item.