A Botwrights tool — free
Your processor is holding your money. Find out which hold — and how it ends.
HoldFast is a self-serve diagnostic for small merchants and sellers. Answer eight questions about the notice you received and it tells you which kind of payout hold you're in, and the exact steps that get it released.
Open the free HoldFast bot Download the free kit (PDF)What it is
If you take payments through Square, PayPal, Stripe, Wave, QuickBooks Payments, or Shopify Payments and a payout is late, partial, paused — or gone entirely — the hardest part is usually figuring out what kind of hold you're actually in. Different holds have different fixes, in a specific order.
HoldFast walks you through a short diagnostic and lands on a named stage: Stage 0 (not a hold at all — just normal settlement timing), 1 (verification / information), 2 (payment review), 3 (reserve), 4 (account limitation), or 5 (closure hold). Then it gives you that processor's playbook for your stage: plain-language explanations, the documents that processor actually asks for, where to submit them, realistic timelines, and a fill-in message template.
The full written kit — the diagnostic and all six processor playbooks — is also available as a free PDF download.
How it works
About ten minutes to your answer.
Run the diagnostic — eight questions about the notice you received.
Get your stage — named in your own processor's terms, with what it means.
Follow the steps in order — and use the fill-in message template for your processor.
Keep a record — every submission, date, and reply in one folder.
Built to be trusted
Private by design
The bot runs entirely in your browser. Your answers never leave your device — there is no account to create and nothing about your business is collected or sent anywhere.
Free while we test demand
The bot and the full kit PDF are free. No price, no upsell inside — we're finding out whether merchants find this useful.
Checked against the sources
Every playbook was verified against the processors' own public documentation — help centers, published terms, and user agreements — as of November 2026.
Your processor's notice is the contract.
The email, dashboard banner, or letter from your processor is the single most important document in your case: it names your hold type, lists what's requested, and often states your deadline and release date. If a number in your notice — a percentage, a date, a deadline — differs from a general figure in HoldFast, your notice wins.
Honest limits
HoldFast is educational. It is not legal or financial advice, and it cannot guarantee any outcome — only your processor can release your funds. What it does is make sure your case lands in front of the right team, complete, the first time: the right steps, in the right order.
It is built from US-facing public documentation; other countries' terms differ, and dashboard screens change over time. If your balance is very large, or you believe a law was broken, a payments attorney is the right spend. US consumers can also file a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (consumerfinance.gov/complaint) — it's free, and processors answer those in writing.
Support HoldFast
HoldFast is free while we test demand. If it helped you, you can tip the workshop:
Start with the diagnostic
Eight questions, about ten minutes, and you'll know exactly which hold you're in and what to do next.
Open the free HoldFast bot Download the free kit (PDF)