Fast onboarding with Stripe, PayPal, or Square feels like a win for high-risk merchants, but the real underwriting often happens later, without warning. Doing the risk review upfront, even if it takes months, is a tradeoff worth making deliberately.

PayPal doesn't use fixed dollar thresholds like Stripe or Square. It uses percentage-based reserves, pattern-triggered holds, and a recurring 180-day review, a genuinely different system worth understanding.