Etsy provided some important answers to sellers who are impacted by a technical issue that stalled payments over the long holiday weekend. As we reported in
Newsflash, reports began on Friday of Direct Checkout payments not going through - and the problem continues into Tuesday evening.
As customers became concerned, irate, or actually cancelled orders due to the long delays, sellers wondered what to do and whether they should ship orders.
Finally on Tuesday
Etsy advised sellers not to ship - "We recommend that you wait until these orders are confirmed to ship your item. Rest assured, we're processing orders on a rolling basis and you will receive a confirmation for your pending order as it is processed."
But even so, sellers worried, such as the ones posting in
this thread. "I have 2 orders but Etsy have send me a mail saying some delay in payment processing and they are working on it. Etsy have mentioned not to ship it until the issue is resolved. The person wanted it to be delivered in 2 days ... I don't know what to do with the order."
Sellers responding to the original poster offered conflicting advice. "Personally I would ship the order if there was any assurance that it would arrive in time," one seller said, while another said, "Many people would say the exact opposite, including me. I never ship until the payment goes through."
Incredibly Etsy continued to have problems, writing on Tuesday at 2 pm ET that Etsy's third-party payment processor continued to have a technical issue that was resulting in delays in payment processing. "Because our third-party payment processor is still dealing with technical issues, new orders are still impacted by payment processing delays. As our processor deals with the backlog of payments, we are processing them on a rolling basis."
Interestingly Etsy revealed on Tuesday that both Integrated and Standalone PayPal are unaffected by the issue. "Only credit card and gift card payments are currently impacted by the issue our third party service provider is experiencing."
What about cases where buyers request a refund? Sellers' hands are tied - Etsy explained, "the order will need to be confirmed before you can issue a refund. If your buyer has further questions, please tell them to contact support@etsy.com."
Another issue sellers worried about was addressed in the FAQs:
Q: Will this issue affect payouts tomorrow?
A: We're working hard to ensure that sellers receive funds from affected sales as soon as possible. For sellers that are expecting to receive payouts tomorrow, your payout will be reflected in your Shop Payment Account balance at 1 PM EST. In order to capture some of the affected payouts that are still processing, we plan to issue another round of payouts this evening. If you have funds included in the evening payouts, you may receive a second email letting you know that your funds are now on their way and you may also see two payments tomorrow in your bank account.
Sellers reported some payments were starting to go through today, but many were unable to figure out in what order - some were older orders, some were newer orders.
Let us know how the problem has impacted you, and what Etsy should do next.
Update 7/8/16: Worldpay is the culprit, here's
the latest on the situation.