Prop Firm Account Frozen: How to Recover

Why did my prop firm account get frozen?

Common triggers: a cluster of complaints about payouts or evaluation rules, a marketing review that found claims the bank could not accept, an acquirer policy change covering the whole category, or a chargeback ratio moving past threshold after a wave of failed evaluations. Cross-border volume can compound any of these.

What should I do first?

Get the reason in writing, then establish whether you have been reported to MATCH and under which code. Then assemble the two documents that answer most doubts in this category: your payout records and your current live marketing. If the freeze is about whether you actually pay traders, that evidence resolves it faster than any argument.

Communicate with funded traders early. Silence during a freeze produces exactly the public complaints that make the acquirer's decision harder to reverse.

How long are funds held?

Up to 180 days on settled funds is standard, matching the window in which cardholders can still dispute a transaction. Where the held balance includes money owed to traders, say so and document it, because a plan for meeting those obligations affects how the acquirer handles the release.

What about traders waiting on payouts?

They are your most urgent problem, ahead of the acquirer. Funded traders owed money who hear nothing will say so publicly, and in this category public accusations that a firm does not pay are the single most damaging thing that can happen to your next application.

Communicate individually and specifically. If you can pay by another route while the account is held, do that and document it, because evidence that you kept paying during a freeze is powerful with the next acquirer.

Should I keep selling evaluations during a review?

Be careful. Taking new evaluation fees while your ability to pay out is uncertain is exactly the pattern regulators and acquirers treat most harshly, and it converts a processing problem into a conduct question.

Pausing new sales costs revenue for a few weeks. Continuing to sell into an uncertain outcome can cost you the ability to get placed at all.

How do I get placed again?

Lead with the evidence that answers the category's core doubt: documented payouts, substantiated marketing, and clear terms. Disclose the freeze and what caused it. Specialist acquirers place prop firms regularly, but they will assume the worst about payouts unless you show otherwise, because they have seen firms that did not pay.

Then diversify. Category-wide policy changes are outside your control, so a single processing relationship is a structural weakness rather than a simplification. That is the core argument in stopping payment processing problems.