How I got rid of my Shopify Payments reserve hold in a month

Sam PosthumaFounder · CEO of histrips

Today I will share how I got rid of all my Shopify Payments / Stripe reserve holds within a month and got 0 chargebacks.

Trust me, I have seen it all, and there is only 1 fast-track solution. I will keep it as short as possible.

Payment providers look at one thing

I have been in this game for 6 years now and have gained a lot of knowledge about payment processors. Payment providers just look at 1 thing: your chargeback rate (Shopify: fraud and dispute monitoring programs).

Having a chargeback rate higher than 1% simply flags your account and gets you banned, or gives you a huge 20% reserve hold for the next 120 days.

Once this happens, creating new payment accounts in your name or company will result in instant rejections as well, because you are "high risk".

Luckily, there is a fast way out: chargeback alerts.

How chargeback alerts work

When a customer makes a chargeback, it takes 2 to 3 days to actually come through. Chargeback alert software can detect these chargebacks in a global payment system right when they get initiated.

They then automatically refund the customer that made the chargeback the same hour. This makes it impossible for a chargeback to come through, because the order is refunded already.

The result

I have been using this for a new brand I started and got my hold, plus almost the full sum, lifted within just 30 to 40 days of using chargeback alerts.

After using chargeback alerts for just 40 days my chargeback rate dropped big time. I shot an email to Shopify gently mentioning this, and boom: my whole reserve hold was gone, a big portion got paid out, and I got instant 24-hour payouts enabled again.

I wanted to share this with all of you because it is one of the main beginner killers: getting cashflow issues at the start of your brand.

The tool I use

My good friend Mark made an amazing product around this: Disputifier.

• Chargeback alert refunding: prevent chargebacks by refunding before it becomes a chargeback.
• You can set specific rules for these alerts, for example: do not refund chargebacks over $200, as you might want to fight and win them.
• They also fight chargebacks that do come through, and win most of them.
• It is no cure, no pay: you do not pay them if you did not get any chargebacks yet.

Originally posted on X.