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Instant Transfer Unavailable Troubleshooting

There’s a number of reasons why you might not be able to use instant transfers:

  • You haven’t linked a bank account to Square, or your bank account isn’t completely verified. 

  • Your current balance is below the minimum transfer amount after fees: $50 for instant transfers.

  • At least one transaction in your balance is over $5,000. 

  • You’re new to Square and already sent your one instant transfer of up to $500 today.

  • We periodically conduct regular account reviews to ensure customer security, which can impact instant transfers.

Link a Visa Debit Card

To use instant transfers, you have to link a Visa debit card. If you haven’t linked a Visa debit card —or if there has been an issue with linking your debit card—instant transfers will be unavailable.

If you have attempted to link your bank account and it isn’t supported, you’ll see an error message asking you to try linking a supported debit card. If you attempted to link a Visa or Mastercard debit card that was issued outside of Canada, it may also have been declined. Learn more about linking a supported debit card.

Choose the Right Transfer Amount

Instant transfers will be unavailable if you try to transfer an amount that is outside the required minimum or maximum limit. You can use instant transfers to send funds of at least $50 after Square’s processing fees to your bank account.

Note: You can select any amount over $50 available in your Square balance if you’ve set up manual transfers on your account.

Square is unable to instantly transfer single payments that are larger than $5,000. If your Square account balance is made up of payments that are less than $10,000, you can send repeated instant transfers to empty your entire balance. For example, if you processed 200 payments of $50 for a total account balance of $10,000, you can make two instant transfers of $5,000. But if you processed 1 payment of $10,000 and that single payment makes up your total account balance, you won’t be able to use instant transfer.

Note: New sellers start with a limit of one instant transfer per day of up to $500. As you continue processing with Square, your daily transfer amount limit will increase.

See if Your Account is Under Review

We regularly monitor your transactions to keep your account safe. If our system notices something that appears out of the ordinary, we suspend all transfers – including instant transfers – to your bank account until we can make sure everything is alright. We usually complete these reviews within one business day – if we need more information to complete the review, we’ll reach out to you by email.

One of our best tools in keeping Square secure is checking in periodically to make sure that everyone is who they say they are. The documentation and information you provide during a security review gives us a sense of how we can be helpful and get your transfers moving again.

For more on instant transfers, check out our instant transfers FAQ.

Learn more about: Square

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