Stripe or PayPal closed your account? Find out why, and what’s next.

A closed account is terminated: you can no longer take payments with it. A limited or restricted account is still open but cannot take payments, or cannot pay out, until the processor is satisfied. An account under review is being checked and may ask you for documents. A reserve is a share of your money held back to cover refunds and disputes that may still arrive. They are different situations with different next steps, which is why the form asks which one you are in.

TMF means terminated merchant file. Mastercard's is called MATCH and Visa's is called VMSS. When a processor ends a business for fraud, serious rule violations or excessive chargebacks it must report it there, and every processor checks the file before it approves a new business. Stripe's documentation says a listing stays for 5 years and that only the processor that made it can ask for a removal or correction. A processor may report an account even after it is closed. There is no public lookup, and Stripe says it does not share what it reports; Stripe's documentation says a business owner can email Mastercard to ask who listed them.

Source: Stripe: terminated merchant files

No, and nobody else can promise it either. Stripe's documentation says a listing can be removed only if the processor made it in error, or, for one reason code, after a PCI compliance problem is fixed. What we can do is help you find out whether you are listed and under which reason code, and show you the history a new processor will want to see. We will not help anyone open an account under a different name or identity to avoid a listing.

Source: Stripe: MATCH entry removal

A reserve is a share of your balance, or of each payment, that the processor keeps as collateral for refunds and disputes. A hold is money you cannot withdraw yet, often until a date or a condition. A closure ends the account, and the processor may still hold your balance for a while afterward. Ask the processor, in writing, for the amount held, the reason, and the date or condition for release. That answer decides what you can plan around.

It depends on the processor and on your case, and we cannot tell you a date. For Stripe, the Services Agreement we read gives no fixed number of days for funds held after a closure; merchants and third-party summaries commonly put it at 90 to 120 days, and some holds run longer. For PayPal, merchants commonly report holds of up to 180 days on a limited account, and PayPal's own notice usually says when the balance becomes available. Read your notice and ask for the date in writing.

We do not promise that, and we will not say we can. Processors decide, and they often do not reverse a closure. What we do is show you what your data supports: how your disputes and fraud warnings moved month by month, what most likely drove them, and what to change. If you want to appeal, we draft a factual letter for you to edit. If you want to move on, we introduce you to backup processors that take businesses like yours.

For Stripe: the payments export, the disputes export, the payouts export and, if you have them, the early fraud warnings. For PayPal: the activity download as CSV (PayPal's help pages say it can be downloaded up to 12 months at a time). If you can still sign in, export now. We could not find a published promise from either company about how long you keep access after a closure, so do not wait. If you cannot sign in, ask the processor for your data in writing, and send what you have: bank statements, notices and emails also help. We will tell you plainly what we can and cannot conclude from them.

Never. You download files and upload them. We do not ask for your password, an API key or access to your account.

We read the dates, amounts, statuses, reasons and statement descriptors, keep the monthly totals and the dispute records, and discard the file. Customer names, emails, addresses and card details in those exports are never read into our system. You can ask us to delete your case at any time from your case page.

A flat fee between $500 and $2,000, set after a person reads your case and based on how much there is to read: one processor and a year of exports is at the lower end, several accounts or a large held balance is at the higher end. You see the exact price before you pay. If we cannot build the report from what you are able to give us, we refund the fee.

We send your price within one business day of your request. Once you have paid and your files are in, the report is delivered within 5 business days.

Some processors may pay Zevron a referral fee if you apply through an introduction we make. It is never added to your price, you do not have to use any processor we suggest, and we only suggest ones that fit your business. Where a fee applies, we tell you next to the suggestion.

No to both. Zevron is not a law firm and the report is not legal or financial advice. We are not affiliated with or endorsed by Stripe, PayPal, Visa or Mastercard. Their names are trademarks of their owners.