Stripe Settlement — T+2 vs Standard, the 7-Day Reserve Trap

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Stripe's default settlement is T+2 — money in your account two business days after the charge. Sounds simple. The trap: Stripe also holds 5-15% of new-merchant volume in a rolling 7-day reserve. So the revenue you booked Monday may not be fully spendable until Wednesday-of-next-week. Most operators blow through their cashflow because they treat Stripe payouts as cash-on-hand. Today: the settlement schedule, the reserve mechanics, and the 60-day cashflow forecast that keeps you solvent.

How Stripe actually pays you

Stripe processes the charge instantly. The money moves to your bank in stages:

T+0 (charge day): Customer pays. Money is now in Stripe's holding account.
T+2 (default for most markets): Stripe schedules payout to your linked bank account. Most operators see funds available T+2-T+3 in their bank.

This is the ideal scenario. In practice, two things complicate it.

The 7-day rolling reserve

Stripe automatically holds a percentage of your daily volume in reserve for 7 days. This is to cover potential chargebacks and refunds.

For new merchants (under 6 months on Stripe):

Reserve: 5-15% of daily volume
Hold period: 7 days

For established merchants (6+ months on Stripe with low risk profile):

Reserve: 0-3% of daily volume
Hold period: 0 days

Reserve mechanics: if you process ,000 on Monday, $50-150 of that gets held until next Monday. The remaining $850-950 goes through normal T+2 settlement.

The cumulative effect: at any given time, a new merchant has 2-7 days of revenue locked in Stripe's reserve. For a $30k/month operator, that's