launch day took 1,900 in payments and the payouts are frozen pending review

This is normal and it is two separate things stacked on top of each other, which is why it feels worse than it is.

First, a brand new account has a waiting period before the very first payout lands regardless of behaviour - roughly one to two weeks depending on where you are. So even with no review at all, launch money was never going to hit your bank on day two.

Second, going from one test charge to sixty two sales in forty eight hours is precisely the pattern that gets a human to look at an account. Not because you did anything wrong - the same shape appears when someone takes card details they should not have, and they cannot tell the difference from the outside without asking you.

What they wanted from me: a link to the live product, a plain description of what the customer receives and when, my refund policy, and identity documents that matched the account details exactly. Mine cleared in six days.

Two data points. First launch, held four days, released with no conditions. Second product, bigger spike, held nine days and then a rolling reserve for about two months where a share of each payment was held back and released on a schedule.

The reserve was the part I had not planned for, and it is worth knowing it exists. It is not a punishment, it is cover against refunds and disputes on a book of customers with no history.

The practical lesson is boring: never commit launch revenue before it is in your bank. I now treat the first payout date as an unknown between one and four weeks and keep enough to cover a month of everything. Paying a contractor out of money that has not settled is how a good week turns into an awkward email.

Mild disagreement with the framing that this is the problem. The review will clear. Your actual exposure is the sixty two strangers.

One-off purchases from a launch crowd produce refund requests for weeks and the occasional dispute for months, and disputes can arrive long after you have spent the money. If you had been paid instantly on Tuesday you would be carrying that risk with no cushion. The hold is annoying and it is also roughly the right amount of caution for a five week old account.

Set aside a slice of this before you spend any of it, whatever the review decides.

Launching next month so I have been reading about exactly this, and the prep list I ended up with is short.

Complete every identity and business detail on the account weeks early rather than at the minimum needed to accept a payment. Put a real product page, a refund policy and a contact address on the site before launch, because those are the first things anyone reviewing looks for. Run a handful of genuine small transactions in the weeks before so the account has a history that is not a vertical line. Set the statement descriptor to the product name. Have the bank account verified in advance and in the same name as the business.

None of it guarantees you skip a review, but it turns a review into a two email conversation instead of a document hunt during your one busy week.

Send everything they asked for in one reply, in the formats they asked for, and stop refreshing. Six to ten days is typical. Do not open a second account, that makes it much worse.