Holds, Reserves, and Account Limitation Policy

General information about Holds, Reserves, and Account Limitations. Under certain circumstances, in order to protect WAAVE and the security and integrity of the network of buyers and sellers that use the WAAVE services, WAAVE may take account-level or transaction-level actions. Unless otherwise set out below, if we take any of the actions described here, we'll provide you with notice of our actions, but we retain the sole discretion to take these actions.

Our decision about holds, limitations, and reserves may be based on confidential criteria that are essential to our management of risk and the protection of WAAVE, our customers, and/or service providers. We may use proprietary fraud and risk modeling when assessing the risk associated with your WAAVE account. In addition, we may be restricted by regulation or a governmental authority from disclosing certain information to you about such decisions. We have no obligation to disclose the details of our risk management or security procedures to you. We hold funds to review and mitigate any actual or reasonably anticipated risk to us or our users.

In order to facilitate WAAVE's actions described above and allow us to assess the level of risk associated with your WAAVE account, you agree to cooperate with WAAVE's reasonable requests for financial statements and other documentation or information in a timely fashion.

In what ways may we hold funds?

Funds may be held in one or more of the following ways:

• Transaction holds - Specific transactions may be held, such as if your buyer disputes the payment in one of the Refunds, Reversals, and Chargebacks situations;
• Release amounts - Funds you receive may be subject to a release amount;
• Reserves - Funds you receive may be subject to a reserve; and
• Account limitations - Your access to funds may be restricted because your account has been limited.

When do we hold funds?

We hold funds when:

• We need to ensure the integrity of a transaction;
• We believe that there's a risk associated with you or your account;
• You receive a dispute, claim, chargeback or reversal in relation to any funds received into your account;
• A marketplace or third party application where WAAVE is offered requests that we do so (if you have questions about why the marketplaces requested the hold, you will need to contact the marketplace or third-party directly);
• You do not meet certain seller or risk standards based on our compliance rules by vertical
• You are a new seller or have a limited history with WAAVE; or
• We need to comply with the law.

What do we consider before holding funds?

Before holding funds, we consider a number of factors, including information available to us from both internal sources and third parties, such as:

• Information you provide us, such as your business history and financial details;
• Publicly available information;
• Your industry;
• Your selling activity;
• Past disputes or dissatisfaction of your customers;
• Information we receive from related third parties;
• Whether the funds are related to an irregular or unusual transaction; and
• Other related information.

The more you use your account, the more we know about your activity. As such, our risk assessment may change and we may increase or decrease the amount of funds we hold based on that changed assessment.

How long do we hold funds?

For transaction holds and release amounts: Funds are usually held for up to 21 days from the date the payment was received into your WAAVE account. Funds may be held for longer than 21 days if:

• We believe that the increased risk associated with you or your account remains after 21 days;
• You receive a dispute, claim, chargeback, or reversal relating to the transaction subject to the hold; and/or
• We have taken another action permitted by this agreement, such as when you are required to verify your identity or the identity of your buyer

We may release a hold earlier than 21 days where we reasonably believe that the relevant transaction has successfully been completed. Any earlier release is at our sole discretion. Funds held for buyer disputes may not be released until we consider the dispute resolved (but no longer than 180 days).

Reserves and limitations: If funds you receive are subject to a reserve, we will notify you how long funds will be held for at the time of setting the reserve. If access to funds is restricted because your account has been limited, you will usually gain access to those funds after the limitation has been lifted.

How do we use held funds?

Generally, any funds we hold will be used in relation to the transactions to which the reserve or hold relates. For example, the held funds will be used when processing refunds, Chargebacks or Reversals, provided the original transaction was subject to a hold.

Other conditions of held funds:

• You direct us to make any payments, reversals or refunds from held funds to a person entitled to them in accordance with this agreement.
• We may remove held funds from your account in accordance with this agreement
• Funds subject to a hold may be subject to a subsequent reversal, chargeback or claim, even after the hold has been released.

Release amounts

If you are a seller, we may limit the amount you can withdraw or use from your WAAVE balance to help protect us and our users from the risk of financial or other loss. The amount of your WAAVE balance that will be available for immediate withdrawal or use is called a “release amount”.

We will notify you of the terms of any release amount we apply to your account.

In the event you do not agree to the terms of a release amount, you may close your account unless otherwise prohibited under this agreement. However, if your account is closed for any reason, we may hold the amount retained in your WAAVE account for up to 180 days.

You may request an increase to your release amount once every 30 days.

Reserves

We may place a reserve on funds held in your account:

• If it is a requirement of our processing partner or acquiring bank, whether for all merchants supported by them or for specific categories of merchants determined by them,
• If, as a result of onboarding checks or ongoing compliance checks, we or our processing and bank partners determine there is an elevated risk associated with your account,
• If your chargeback rate exceeds 0.4% of payment volume in any month,
• Or at any time where we reasonably believe there may be a higher than acceptable level of risk associated with you, your WAAVE account, your business model, or your transactions.

The reserves help protect us and our users from the risk of financial or other losses.

There are two types of reserves that may be placed on your WAAVE account, and one or both may be applied at the same time:

• A Rolling reserve is a reserve where a percentage of each transaction you receive each day is held and then released later on a scheduled basis. For example, your reserve could be set at 10% and held for a 90-day rolling period – meaning 10% of the money you receive on day 1 is held and then released on day 91, 10% of the money you receive on day 2 is held until day 92, etc. Rolling reserves are the most common type of reserve.

• A Minimum reserve is a specific minimum amount of money that you're required to keep available in your WAAVE balance at all times. The minimum reserve is either taken as an upfront amount deposited all at once or is established on a rolling basis from percentages of sales until the minimum reserve is achieved, much like a rolling reserve.

If we place a reserve on funds in your account, the funds will be shown as “pending” and we'll notify you of the terms of the reserve. If we change the terms of the reserve due to a change in our risk assessment, we'll notify you of the new terms.

In the event you do not agree to the terms of the reserve, you may close your account unless otherwise prohibited under this agreement. However, if your account is closed for any reason, we have the right to hold part or all of the reserve for up to 180 days.

We may also delay payment for withdrawals, set-off amounts from your balance, and/or require that you, or a person associated with you, enter into other forms of security arrangements with us in order to manage risk.

You will, at your own expense, undertake any further action required to establish a reserve or other form of security if we determine that there is risk associated with your account.

Account Limitations

Limitations are implemented to help protect WAAVE, buyers, and sellers when we notice restricted activities, an increased financial risk, or activity that appears to us as unusual or suspicious. Limitations also help us collect information necessary for keeping your WAAVE account open.

We may limit your access to process payment, send payment requests, or access payouts for up to 180 days. A limitation may remain beyond 180 days if we reasonably believe there is still a risk to the integrity, security, or reliability of us or our systems.

There are several reasons why your WAAVE account could be limited, including:

• If your chargeback rate exceeds 1% of payment volume for any given month.
• If we hold a reasonable belief that there is an increased risk associated with your WAAVE account or other service you receive from us or one of our affiliates.
• If your account is associated with another account or service you receive from us or one of our affiliates which has been limited, is not in good standing, or poses a risk to the integrity, security or reliability of us or our systems.
• If we suspect someone could be using your WAAVE account without your knowledge, we'll limit it for your protection and look into the fraudulent activity.
• If your debit or credit card issuer alerts us that someone has used your card without your permission. Similarly, if your bank lets us know that there have been unauthorized transfers between your WAAVE account and your bank account.
• In order to comply with the law.
• If we reasonably believe you have breached this agreement or violated the Acceptable Use Policy.
• Seller performance indicating your WAAVE account is high risk. Examples include: selling an entirely new or high-cost product type, such as jewelry, or if your typical sales volume increases rapidly.
• Reports of unauthorized or unusual card use associated with the account.
• Reports of unauthorized or unusual bank account use associated with the account.
• Multiple disputes from your customers received regarding non-dispatch of goods, non-delivery of services, goods not as described, or problems with goods shipped.
• Receipt of potentially fraudulent funds.
• Facilitation of fraudulent activity.
• Excessive disputes or reversals.
• Refusal to cooperate in an investigation or with our requirements to verify your identity when requested.
• Material breaches of this agreement or any of its incorporated policies.
• A risk assessment of your account conducted by us.
• The name on the Nominated Bank Account not matching the name on your account.
• Return of an incoming electronic funds transfer for insufficient funds or incorrect bank details.
• Use of an anonymizing proxy.
• Reports from credit agencies of a high level of risk.
• Use of your account is deemed by us, Visa, MasterCard to constitute abuse of the card system or a violation of card association rules, including using our system to test card behaviors.
• Logging in from a country not included in WAAVE's permitted countries list.
• Failure to provide us with information about you or your business activities that we may reasonably request.
• Any other activities which we reasonably deem as high-risk selling or receiving activity.

You must resolve any issues with your account before a limitation can be removed. Normally, this is done after you provide us with the information we request. However, if we reasonably believe a risk still exists after you have provided us that information, we may take action to protect WAAVE, our users, a third party, or you from reversals, fees, fines, penalties, legal and/or regulatory risks, and any other liability. 

The actions we may take include:

• Continue to limit your account access to protect us against the risk of reversals, legal and/or regulatory risk or because we may be prohibited by law from releasing funds or un-restricting your account;
• Close your account by giving you notice and returning any funds held in your balance to you, less funds in dispute, or funds on hold. If you are later determined to be entitled to funds in dispute we will return those funds to you; or
• Refuse to provide our services to you in the future.

There may be certain situations where there is no specific action that you can take to help remove the limitation (for example, the limitation is put in place due to policies we have to ensure we're in compliance with laws). If you find that your WAAVE account has been limited, you should either review the email you receive from us informing you that your WAAVE account is limited, or contact your account manager.