Holds and Fraud Prevention

Hodle screens every deposit and every payout in real time. Most operations clear without any delay. A small share is held or refused so that a person can review it before money moves. This page explains what a hold is, what your integration sees, and how to reduce holds on legitimate traffic.

Why holds exist

PIX settles in seconds and cannot be reversed by the sender's bank once the money has left. Fraud rings use this to move stolen or disputed funds: they pay PIX into an account, convert the balance, and cash out to a third party before the original payer contests the PIX (MED).

When that happens, the contested amount is returned to the payer out of the receiving account. Holding a suspicious operation for a short review protects you, your end customers, and the payers on the other side.

What Hodle monitors

The screening combines several signals about the transaction, the wallet and the people involved, such as:

• the history and behavior of the end customer's wallet and sub-account;
• how deposits arrive (frequency, amounts, payers) compared with the usual pattern;
• who receives a payout, and how that person relates to the account holder;
• restrictions reported by our banking and liquidity partners;
• internal block lists of PIX keys, tax IDs and financial institutions.

Holds applied by the PSAV

Hodle operates with a licensed virtual asset service provider (PSAV, Prestador de Serviços de Ativos Virtuais) that settles part of the conversions and PIX transfers. The PSAV runs its own anti-money-laundering and fraud screening, and it may hold or refuse an operation on its own for adverse findings, such as:

• a restriction on the account, an end customer, a wallet, a PIX key or a tax ID;
• an adverse result in its transaction monitoring or sanctions screening;
• a request from a regulator or a court.

Hodle does not control these holds and cannot lift them on the PSAV's behalf. The PSAV usually does not disclose its reason either. What your integration sees:

• Payout: the PAYOUT_ON_HOLD webhook, with no reason detail, followed by the final event of the payout (see Payout hold).
• Deposit: the deposit stays in FIAT_PAID or PROCESSING longer than usual, with no hold event. Support contacts you when a deposit is held this way.

Support follows up with the PSAV and tells you the outcome.

Deposit hold

A held deposit is a PIX that was paid but whose asset is not yet delivered.

• The PIX settles normally. The payer sees a completed payment.
• The deposit stays in FIAT_PAID (see deposit status) instead of moving to PROCESSING and COMPLETED.
• Your account receives the DEPOSIT_ON_HOLD webhook, so you do not need to infer the hold from a stuck status.
• No asset is sent until the review ends.

When the review ends, the deposit follows one of two paths:

Payout hold

A payout that fails the screening is stopped before any PIX is sent: no money leaves the account, and the balance is not debited.

• POST /api/wallet/payout answers 403 with a generic risk-analysis error.
• The PAYOUT_ON_HOLD webhook is also sent, with the externalId you used.
• A payout to a blocked PIX key, tax ID or financial institution is refused the same way.

A payout held by the PSAV can be stopped after the API has already accepted it. In that case you receive PAYOUT_ON_HOLD first and then the final event of the payout, usually PAYOUT_FAILED. Do not resend it while support reviews the case.

Retrying the same payout, or splitting it into smaller payouts, does not change the outcome. Contact support instead.

What your end customer should be told

Tell the customer that the operation is under a security review and that you will get back to them. Do not say which rule applied, even when you can guess it.

How to reduce holds on legitimate traffic

• Send subAccountId on every deposit and payout. Screening per end customer isolates a bad actor without affecting the rest of your traffic.
• Run KYC on your end customers (KYC) before they move volume. A verified holder paying out to their own PIX key is the lowest-risk path.
• Pay out to the holder's own PIX key whenever the product allows it. Payouts to third parties get a closer look, especially right after a deposit.
• Keep your own limits for new end customers: cap the first days of volume and delay the first cash-out after the first deposit.
• Tell us about expected peaks (campaigns, payroll days, migrations) so the review team knows the traffic is legitimate.
• Act on disputes fast. When you receive a dispute event, freeze the end customer on your side and share what you know with support.

Review times and contact

Holds are reviewed by Hodle's compliance team. To speed a review up, open a ticket with support and include the externalId, the subAccountId, and any context about the end customer, such as a KYC record, an invoice or the reason for the payment.