Balances

Accounts at Swan are designed for credit balances only. Swan account balances can never go below zero, meaning Swan rejects outgoing payments if the account's Available balance isn't sufficient to cover the total payment amount. The only exception is the automatic billing of banking fees.

There are four different account balances.

Balance	Includes	Equal to
Booked	Transactions that are already debited or credited	Sum of all Booked transactions
Pending	Transactions that were authorized but haven't been debited or credited yet	Sum of all Pending transactions
Reserved	Transactions that require rolling reserve according to the policy for that payment method Reserved amount is included in the Booked balance	Sum of all Booked transactions for which the funds are still in rolling reserve
Available	Balance that is actually available to be used	Booked + Pending - Reserved. Currently, Pending is always negative, while Reserved is always positive.

Example: Insufficient funds

This example involves the balances Booked, Pending, and Available.

1. An account has a Booked balance of €142.
2. There is a Pending outgoing transfer request for €42 that is still being processed. So the Available balance is €100 (€142 - €42 = €100).
3. This account doesn't have a sufficient balance to send an outgoing payment of more than its €100 Available balance. So the payment is rejected.

Example: Rolling reserve

This example involves the balances Booked, Reserved, and Available.

1. A merchant's account has a Booked balance of €200 thanks to accepting a customer's payment through SEPA Direct Debit.
2. For this example, the rolling reserve is 15% over 15 business days (exact rolling reserve amounts can change based on your contract with Swan). So the Reserved balance is €30 for 15 days.
3. The Available balance from this transaction is €170 for the duration of the rolling reserve period (€200 - €30 = €170).
4. After 15 days, the Reserved balance is released and the full Available balance is €200.