Balances

Money → Balances is what you hold with us right now.

Needs balance.read.

One block per currency, and they are never added up

The page shows a panel per currency and offers no grand total. That is deliberate: there is no exchange rate the ledger has committed to, so a combined figure would not be any amount of money you actually have. Balances are held per currency, are not pooled, and are not converted automatically.

If you only trade in one currency you will only ever see one panel.

The four figures

Each panel shows four, and the difference between them is the point of the page.

Figure	What it is
Available	What you can withdraw right now. If part of it is in an approved settlement, the tile says so — “Includes … approved for settlement, which leaves when the payout is sent.”
Pending	“Paid, not yet released to you.” Real money, not yet yours to move.
Reserved	Held back deliberately — against disputes and refunds.
On the ledger	Everything, the sum of the above.

The arithmetic is printed on screen rather than left to be inferred, because “why can I only withdraw part of my balance” is the question this page exists to answer.

A collection lands in pending the moment it succeeds. When it becomes available depends on your account’s rules, which the page states under the balances — “When pending money becomes available.” There is one rule for mobile money and bank, and one for cards:

Rule	Pending becomes available
On confirmation	“As soon as the payment is confirmed” — when the payment partner tells us it succeeded — or a set number of hours after that, if your account has a hold.
On reconciliation	“Once the payment partner has paid us and we have reconciled their statement, usually within a few working days.” Not on a timer: a late statement means longer.

Usually mobile money and bank are released on confirmation, straight away, and cards on reconciliation. Cards take longer because “the card network settles them later and a cardholder can still dispute them.” Your rules are set by us, on your pricing plan or for your account.

In test mode every payment is released when it is confirmed, whatever the live rules say (a hold, if you have one, still applies).

From the API, GET /v1/balances includes funds_rules: release, hold_hours, card_release, card_hold_hours and test_releases_on_confirmation.

Next settlement

“Batches not paid to you yet. An approved batch is about to be paid out, and its net leaves your available balance when it is sent.” See Settlements.

Balance activity

“Every movement on your balance in the last 30 days: payments, fees, payouts, refunds, deposits, settlements and withdrawals.” Each row has a date, a type — Payment, Fee, Payout, Refund, Deposit, Settlement, Withdrawal, Reversal or Adjustment — a description and a signed amount. A deposit we credit reads “Deposit from PaySigna ({reference})”. From the API: GET /v1/balances/activity.

Funding your balance before you collect

To make payouts before you have collected anything, send money to PaySigna and quote a reference. Ask us for the account details first. Our operations team checks the transfer against the bank statement and credits it, which takes a second person’s approval. It then shows on your balance as available, as a “Deposit from PaySigna ({reference})” entry in Balance activity. Bank charges on the way in are not credited: you get what arrived.

Reserved, specifically

A reserve is not a fee and it is not lost. It is money held against the possibility of a refund or a chargeback, and it is released back into available on a later settlement — the batch’s breakdown shows Reserve released as an addition when it happens. See Settlements.

If you want to know why a reserve exists on your account, or how large it is, that is a conversation with us rather than something the page can explain.

Other things on the panel

Each currency panel also reports the currency’s exponent — how many decimal places it has. It is there as information, because it is what makes it visible that XOF has no centimes. Nothing on the page divides by it, and neither should your own spreadsheet: use the formatted figures.

Controls

Control	What it does
Refresh	Re-reads the balances.
Environment switch	Test balances are fictional. A healthy test balance means nothing about live.

There is no filter bar and no date range. A balance is a figure as of now, not over a period — for a period, use Settlements.

Empty state

“No balance yet — a balance appears as soon as your first payment settles.”

Note the wording: it is the first payment to settle, not the first to succeed. A brand-new account with successful test collections and no settlement cycle behind them correctly shows nothing here.

Withdrawing from here

The withdrawal form validates against Available, not against the ledger total, and will not let you type more than you can move. See Withdrawals.