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Card class: Non-Hero • Category: Payment Gateway

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At a glance

Average time from a Square payment capture to funds landing in your bank account, over the period. Standard: T+1 = 1.0, 1.5 days. With Instant Deposit usage: 0.1, 0.5 days. With reserves: longer.
What it countsAVG(payout.created_at - payment.created_at) in days, weighted by amount.
CurrencyPer-currency.
Instant Deposit weightingInstant deposits drag the average down.
Time window30D.
Alert trigger>3.0 days absolute.
Rolesowner, finance, operations

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Calculation

Calculated automatically from your Square data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.

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Worked example

30-day window: 
Average settlement = 1.2 days (USD), 1.4 days (CAD)

Most payouts hit at T+1 02:00; some weekend / holiday push to T+2 or T+3;
Instant Deposit usage on ~5% of volume pulls the blended down slightly.

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Sibling cards merchants should reference together

CardWhy pair
squ_payouts_pendingSnapshot of in-flight.
squ_payout_age_daysDays since last.
Stripe stripe_avg_settlement_daysCross-PSP.

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Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Where to look in the Square Dashboard: Square Dashboard does not surface this directly; it’s an aggregate over the deposits view. Cross-reference Balance → All deposits. Why ours may differ: weighting method (volume-weighted vs count-weighted), period boundary handling. Cross-connector reconciliation: Square’s T+1 default vs Stripe’s T+2 means a multi-rail merchant should expect Square avg to be ~1 day faster than Stripe avg.

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Known limitations / merchant FAQs

“My average is 1.8, why higher than T+1?” Weekend and holiday payouts push some to T+2 or T+3, dragging the average up. If you’re consistently above 2.0, schedule may have changed. “How does Instant Deposit affect this?” Instant Deposits land in minutes, contribution near 0 days. A merchant who Instant-Deposits 50% of volume would average ~0.6 days. “Reserves and settlement time?” Reserve-held funds settle at the reserve-release date, which can be 90, 180 days. If reserve is large, the blended average lengthens materially. “Why is CAD slower than USD?” Cross-border banking friction and different ACH equivalent in Canada (Interac, EFT) have slightly different cycles. “Does this include weekends?” Yes; calendar days, not banking days. “Multi-location merchants, single average?” Yes, per-currency. Locations in different currencies show separate averages.

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Avg Settlement Time (days) is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across Square and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. Start for free or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.