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Amazon Pay reserve policy

Note: The following policy applies to merchants using Amazon Pay. For merchants using Selling on Amazon, see Payments FAQ.

Amazon Pay may require that you maintain a minimum balance in your account to secure the performance of your payment obligations. We call this minimum balance a reserve.

Why does Amazon Pay need a reserve?

For the first three months with new Business and Merchant Accounts, you will be placed in the Tier I Reserve. The Tier I Reserve amount is the sum of all your payments processed over the past 7 days, or the amount of any unresolved transaction disputes (that is, buyer chargebacks and claims that are still in progress), whichever is greater. 

After three months of active selling or conducting payments using our services, if you have completed more than 100 orders with us, and have achieved an Order Defect Rate (ODR) of less than 1%, you may be upgraded to the Tier II Reserve. The applicable reserve amount for Tier II Reserve merchants is either the merchant's Order Defect Rate multiplied by their trailing 30 days of sales or the total amount of unresolved disputes, whichever is higher.

The Order Defect Rate is defined as the number of orders with a defect divided by the number of orders in the time period under review. This defect rate is represented as a percentage. An order has a defect if we have received negative feedback, an A-to-z Guarantee claim, or a service credit card chargeback on that order. An order can only be "defective" once. Having negative feedback and a claim on the same order will only count as a single defect. 

To check your Order Defect Rate, sign in to Seller Central with your Amazon Payments merchant account and see the Customer Service Performance dashboard.

 
Event Account balance Disburseable balance
  Tier I Tier II
Customer places an order on August 1 £0 £0 £0
You ship the item on August 3 £100 £0 £100

(Assuming no other unresolved disputes)

On August 10 £100 £100 

(Assuming no other unresolved disputes)

£100
Claim submitted on August 16 against a previous order for £10 £100 £90

 (Assuming unresolved dispute for £10)

£90

(Assuming unresolved dispute for £10)

Special notes and considerations

  • Changing your bank account information starts an automatic 3-day hold on disbursements.
  • Amazon monitors all merchants for order quality. Notwithstanding your current Reserve Tier status or your Order Defect Rate (ODR), Amazon may review your account, and your reserve requirements may be raised, lowered or removed from time to time.

See also