A payment company is holding your money: the UK route

Be clear about what that gets you. We read five published ombudsman decisions about held balances end to end. In none of them did the ombudsman order the firm to release the money early, and in none of them did it make the firm say why the account was reviewed. What the ombudsman does put right is time past the hold the firm's own terms allow, and it does that by awarding interest at 8% simple per year. ⁵ So the deadline you were quoted, and the date it expired, are the two facts worth building your complaint around.

First: is the firm FCA-regulated at all?

The 15-day rule and the ombudsman both come from FCA regulation, so they only exist if the firm holding your money is authorised here. The FCA's own Firm Checker answers that. ³ We searched it for the companies this site covers on 15 September 2026.

FCA Firm Checker, searched by company name on 15 September 2026

Search for	Firm returned	Firm reference number
PayPal	PayPal UK Ltd	994790 (e-money), 996405 (consumer credit), 1000741 (crypto)
Stripe	Stripe Payments UK Limited	900461
Shopify	Shopify International Limited	1031087
Payoneer	Payoneer Payment Services (UK) Limited	966835
Square	Squareup Europe Ltd	900846
Wise	Wise Payments Limited	900507
Paddle	No payments firm returned	—
Lemon Squeezy	No results found	—
Gumroad	No results found	—
FastSpring	No results found	—

Two warnings about reading that table. A blank is not proof a firm is unauthorised. The FCA says the Firm Checker leaves out products and services offered only to other firms or professionals, and leaves out firms that are no longer, or not yet, authorised.³ Searching "Paddle" returns a firm of solicitors and an unrelated company; searching "Paddle.com Market", "Lemon Squeezy", "Gumroad" and "FastSpring" returns No results found. If that is your processor, do two things before you plan around the ombudsman: search the full Financial Services Register, and ask the firm in writing which regulated entity is holding your balance and which ombudsman or complaints scheme covers it. Make them answer that in writing — the answer decides every step after it.

And check you are complaining about the right entity. All five decisions below name PayPal (Europe) Sarl et Cie SCA, the Luxembourg entity. PayPal's current UK user agreement says PayPal UK Ltd is the FCA-authorised e-money institution, firm reference number 994790 — the same number the Firm Checker returns. ⁴ The name on your closure email is the name your complaint should use.

The order to do it in

1. Complain to the firm, in writing, and say it is a complaint Not a support chat. Put in the dates, the amount, the hold period you were quoted, and any release date you were given. Keep the copy you sent and the date you sent it — the 35 business day clock runs from that day.¹
2. Watch the payment-firm clocks, not the general one Most financial firms have 8 weeks. Payment service providers and e-money issuers do not: 15 business days for certain complaints, and a final response within 35 business days at the outside.¹ If they miss it, that is itself a reason to go to the ombudsman rather than wait.
3. Go to the Financial Ombudsman within 6 months Six months from the final response. Miss it and you will most likely lose the chance to have the complaint looked at.¹ It is free, you do not need a lawyer or a claims company, and a claims company will take a cut of anything you win.¹ There is an outer limit too: normally 6 years from the problem, or 3 years from when you knew you had cause to complain.¹
4. If you accept the decision, the firm must comply A decision you accept binds the firm. If you reject it, you keep the option of court — county court or High Court in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the Sheriff Court in Scotland.¹

What the ombudsman has actually decided about held balances

Published decisions are anonymised but complete, and anyone can read them. These five are all about a payment company holding a closed or limited account's balance. We read each one in full on 15 September 2026.

Five published Financial Ombudsman Service decisions on withheld balances

Decision	What happened	Outcome
DRN-3055465	Account blocked and closed in February 2020. Balance held for 180 days, then held further while the firm rejected the ID documents sent to it. Released 20 December 2020.	Not upheld. Closing the account and holding the balance for 180 days were within the account terms, the doubts about the ID were reasonable, and the firm "isn’t required to give him a specific reason" for the review or the closure.
DRN-3479960	Permanent limitation in May 2020 with a stated 180-day hold. Funds were released in September 2021 without the ID the firm had said a month earlier it still needed.	Upheld in part. Holding the money "for nearly a year after the initial 180-days limitation had elapsed" was unfair. Award: £50 for trouble and upset. No interest, because the complainant said the money was earmarked for living costs.
DRN-3832933	Permanent limitation in August 2020 with a stated 180-day hold. Shortly after that period expired the firm limited the account again, starting a fresh 180 days. It accepts the funds should have been released by March 2021; the restrictions came off on 21 July 2021.	Upheld. Award: 8% simple interest per year on the withheld balance from 25 February 2021, the day the first 180 days expired, until the money was handed back. The losses claimed for the complainant’s own limited company could not be awarded to him, because the company is a separate legal entity.
DRN1898614	A limited company selling goods online. Account closed February 2019 with about £7,000 inside; part used to settle a credit facility, the remaining £3,200 released on 8 October 2019 — about 225 days in all.	Upheld. The ombudsman accepted the terms allowed a hold beyond 180 days where the firm needed one, but the firm "declined to give a reason", and chargebacks generally have to be raised within 120 days, so 180 days was enough to cover the risk. Award: 8% simple interest for the extra 45 days, plus £150.
DRN-4327944	A transfer out to a newly added bank account was blocked in April 2023 by automated fraud detection, partly because the account was reached over a VPN. The block was lifted, reinstated, and the money moved the next day.	Not upheld. The ombudsman would not expect the firm to disclose the exact reasons a fraud block fired, since that could help fraudsters work around it.

Read together, those five say something specific, and it is not what most people expect when they take a held balance to an ombudsman.

The hold itself is usually found to be within the firm's terms. The 180 days survived in every one of these cases. The ombudsman also accepted, more than once, that the firm does not have to tell you what triggered the review.

What gets remedied is the overrun. Two of the five turned on the firm keeping the money past its own stated period with no reason given — and both produced 8% simple interest for the extra days, plus a modest sum for the inconvenience. In one, the ombudsman spelled out the reasoning: chargebacks generally have to be raised within 120 days, so 180 days is enough to cover the risk the hold exists for. ⁵

So keep the message that stated the period. The screenshot saying "180 days", and the date those days ran out, are worth more to your complaint than any account of how the firm treated you. That is the fact the ombudsman can measure.

If the account was a business account

The ombudsman can take complaints from micro-enterprises and small businesses as well as individuals. The FCA states the tests: a micro-enterprise employs fewer than 10 people and has annual turnover or a balance sheet total under £2 million; a small business is not a micro-enterprise, has annual turnover under £6.5 million, and either a balance sheet total under £5 million or fewer than 50 employees. ² Charities with income under £6.5 million and trusts with net assets under £5 million are also covered.²

Two traps show up in the decisions themselves. The small-business rules only reach events on or after 1 April 2019: in DRN1898614 the ombudsman could look at how long the money was held, but not at the decision to close the account a month earlier, because the company was too large to be a micro-enterprise at the time. ⁵ And in DRN-3832933, losses suffered by the complainant's limited company could not be paid to him personally, because the company is a separate legal entity. If the money was the company's, the company has to be the complainant. ⁵

If you are not in the UK

The US equivalent of this page is the CFPB route, including which payment companies are and are not in that database at all. Either way, add the case to the incident record — it collects held balances with the amount, the stated hold period, and whether the money ever came back, including every PayPal case we have verified. You can submit yours.

Sources

1. Financial Conduct Authority, "How to complain". fca.org.uk/consumers/how-complain. Last updated by the FCA 20 May 2025; retrieved 15 September 2026. Source for the 15 and 35 business day rules for payment service providers and e-money issuers, the general 8-week rule, the 6-month ombudsman deadline, the 6-year and 3-year limits, the binding effect of an accepted decision, the court route, and claims management company fees.
2. Financial Conduct Authority, "How to complain if you're a small business". fca.org.uk/firms/how-complain-small-businesses. Last updated by the FCA 12 February 2025; retrieved 15 September 2026. Source for the micro-enterprise and small business tests and the charity and trust thresholds.
3. Financial Conduct Authority, FCA Firm Checker. fca.org.uk/consumers/fca-firm-checker. Searched by us on 15 September 2026 for each company name in the table above; the firm names and reference numbers are as returned by that tool on that date. Same page is the source for what the tool leaves out.
4. PayPal UK user agreement. paypal.com/uk/legalhub/useragreement-full. Retrieved 15 September 2026. Source for PayPal UK Ltd being authorised as an electronic money institution under firm reference number 994790.
5. Financial Ombudsman Service, published final decisions, each read in full on 15 September 2026: DRN-3055465, DRN-3479960, DRN-3832933, DRN1898614, DRN-4327944. Source for the outcomes, the 8% simple interest awards, the 120-day chargeback reasoning, the 1 April 2019 jurisdiction limit and the separate legal entity point.