I cashed out but haven't received my money, and I can no longer cash out

My cashout hasn't turned up

Please note that cashouts can take up to 24 hours to come through, although usually they are a lot quicker!

If it’s been more than 30 days since you cashed out and you still haven’t received your money, please send us a message using the button below.

My payment has been returned and I can no longer cash out

If you can no longer cash out after a returned payment, don’t worry — the relevant amount will be automatically returned to your Prolific account and your balance will be re-credited. You will receive an email from us when this happens.

Why has my payment been returned?

There are a few reasons why your payment(s) might have been returned. Some of these will depend on the type of PayPal account you have. Here are a few things that could have happened:

Your PayPal account hasn’t been configured to receive / accept one or both of the currencies that are included in the cashout. The PayPal settings for this in PayPal will differ based on whether you have a ‘standard personal’ or ‘premier / business’ account in PayPal.
Your cashout might need claiming in PayPal and wasn’t claimed within 30 days. This is dependent on the type of PayPal account you have.
During processing, PayPal may flag that we weren’t able to send the funds to your PayPal account due to some limitations or issues with your account. If this is the case please get in touch with PayPal to resolve the issues with your PayPal account. You can get in touch here.

You can read more detail about each of these three return categories further down.

Why can I no longer cash out?

For your safety, our payment processor Hyperwallet automatically disables cashouts when a payment is returned to us by PayPal. This happens independently of the reason given by PayPal.

This is a temporary measure to ensure that the issues that caused the return on your cashout are resolved before you try to cash out again.

ℹ️ What is Hyperwallet?
Hyperwallet, a PayPal service, is a payment processor. This means that when you cash out on Prolific, Hyperwallet will be the ones delivering your money straight into your PayPal account.

1 - Configuring your currency settings in PayPal

There are 2 different types of PayPal accounts:

Standard personal PayPal account
Premier or business PayPal account

The way you accept payments and manage currencies varies depending on which account you have.

Standard personal PayPal account

If you have a standard personal PayPal account, you'll have 2 options when receiving a payment in a currency that's not yet set up in your PayPal wallet. You have the option to either 'accept and convert', or to 'accept and create a new balance in that currency'.

Please make sure that you do not ‘refuse’ any payments from us, as this will automatically prevent us from sending you money in the refused currency again and will temporarily disable your ability to cash out.

Premier or business PayPal account

If you have a premier or business PayPal account, then please review your payment receiving preferences and make sure you have configured your account to accept or receive both USD and GBP payments. More guidance can be found in PayPal’s help guide here.

If you’re not sure which type of PayPal account you have, please get in touch with PayPal directly to find out, and check with them that your account is configured to be able to receive Hyperwallet payouts from us in both GBP and USD currencies.

Once you have reviewed and adjusted your settings where necessary, please let us know and we can get cashouts re-enabled for you.

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2 - Claiming your money in PayPal

It's possible that your money has been sent to you and you just need to accept it in PayPal.

If you don’t claim your payment in PayPal within 30 days, they will return the payment to Prolific and your balance will be re-credited with the relevant amount. You will receive an email from us to let you know when we receive a returned payment and re-credit your balance.

Please note: Whether you need to accept cashouts in PayPal will depend on the type of account and payment receiving preferences you have. If you're not sure how to go and claim your payment in PayPal, please get in touch with PayPal directly.

If you want to learn more about the PayPal Premier / Business account’s Payment Receiving Preferences check out PayPal’s guidance here (please note this is not applicable if you have a ‘standard’ account).

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3 - Limitations or issues with your PayPal account

When processing incoming cashouts, PayPal may flag that we weren’t able to send the funds to your account due to limitations or issues with your PayPal account. If this is the case, please get in touch with PayPal to resolve the issues with your account. You’ll need to resolve the issues with your PayPal account before we can re-enable your cashouts.

How will I know if there are limitations or issues with my PayPal account?

The first two steps are to check the guidance we provided above in 1 - Configuring your currency settings in PayPal and 2 - Claiming your money in PayPal.

If there are no issues with your currency settings and you have no pending cashouts in PayPal that need claiming, then there are likely limitations or issues with your PayPal account.

What to do next?

In this case, please get in touch with our Support team here, so we can provide more information on the issues. You can use the information we provide to contact PayPal's support team and get the issue resolved as quickly as possible.

Need further help?
Click here to contact us