Another connection between these two types of reserves is that they can change. For Amazon Pay merchants, it’s called being upgraded to Tier II. It can happen after a year of registering or upon request. From then on, Amazon only keeps a small percentage of the sales, but for 28 days.

For Amazon sellers, there’s no clear transition. Some sellers report being stuck with a reserve for years without knowing why, even with spotless records. Some claim the 7-day reserves are lifted, but there’s still confusion over random earnings from their Amazon disbursements.

The Amazon Disbursement Timeline

How long it takes for your funds to be sent to you is not entirely up to Amazon. As a new seller, you have the option to request daily disbursements into your bank account. This can help offset the effects of the reserve.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t always apply to older, ‘grandfathered’ accounts. They tend to come with automatic disbursements every 2 weeks. But on the upside, they don’t usually have reserves, unless they were suspended at some point.

So, disbursements and reserves balance each other out. Whether the funds are tied up in a reserve or waiting to be disbursed, isn’t the issue; uncertainty is. To a seller, the only real difference is that disbursements are guaranteed because the balance is available; not so with reserves.

But the most important factor affecting this timeline is, in fact, the tracking number. When sellers upload it as soon as they ship, they tilt the scales in their favor. Amazon would then replace the EDD with the actual delivery date, and start the reserve countdown right away.

For people selling internationally, the total wait can, hypothetically, take over 50 days, if they don’t send tracked shipments. That’s 28 days to the end of the EDD, 7 for the hold, up to 14 until the next disbursement The name of the payment Amazon ma… More, and a few more days for the transfer to clear. And they never know if or when the reserve will be lifted.

Then there’s Lead Time to Ship, LTS or handling time. However many days you say you need to ship an item is exactly how many days Amazon will add to the grand total. If you ship early but without a tracking number, the reserve still starts when your LTS + EDD time clears.

Most sellers have a 2-day lead time. So, for instance, a regular US seller delivering domestically with a tracked service would get paid after at least 16 days. That’s 2 business days standard lead time, 7 days to deliver, and 7 days for the Amazon reserve to clear.

So, for an item ordered on January 10, US sellers and online merchants who use Amazon Pay could be paid as late as January 30. But if they sold that same item on their own website and without using Amazon Pay, they’d have that money right away.