Why is my account showing a negative balance?

Your WooPayments balance can become negative in a few ways. The most common by far is the following scenario:

1. You charge a customer for their order on your WooCommerce site.
2. Those funds get added to your WooPayments balance.
3. The money is deposited, reducing your account balance to zero.
4. You refund an order, or a dispute is filed. Now your balance is negative.

The higher your order volume is, the more rare this issue becomes, since new incoming orders will often provide your account balance with enough of a “buffer” to accommodate refunds and disputes. For low volume merchants, negative balances may happen more often, since there are fewer new sales to help offset incoming refunds or disputes.

Recovering from a negative balance

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If you use a bank account to receive deposits from your WooPayments accounts, your bank account may be debited to cover the negative balance. If your bank account does not qualify to be debited, recovering from a negative balance will behave as described below in the debit card case.

If you use a debit card to receive deposits, your card will not be debited. Instead, income from future sales on your site will go toward paying down the negative balance. Once your balance becomes positive again, deposits to your card will resume as normal.