Upwork may temporarily limit financial transactions on your account if a payment fails. To resolve this, update or add a valid billing method and pay any outstanding balance. Check your email for details from donotreply@upwork.com and consider adding a backup payment method to prevent future issues.
At times, we need to place a temporary hold on your account. We know this can be alarming, but rest assured in most cases it’s easy to resolve the issue quickly.
If you’ve received the following error message, it means we need you to make an update to your account:
Financial transactions for Account Name (8-Digit #) have been limited
Usually, this hold happens when we try to charge your billing method but it fails. The quickest way to fix this is by adding a new billing method and paying any outstanding balance on your account.
Additional troubleshooting
If we placed a hold on your account, we also sent you an email to explain all the details and how to fix the issue. This email is sent out from donotreply@upwork.com. Check your spam folder if you didn’t see it come in. If you are still uncertain as to why the charge failed, you can try these steps:
- PayPal - Log into your PayPal account to confirm your Billing Agreement with Upwork is signed and that your PayPal account is verified. If you don’t see any issues there, please contact PayPal to find out why they are declining the Upwork charges.
- Credit Card - In order to use your credit card on Upwork, the card must be verified. If you haven’t already verified your card, click here to learn how. There could be many other reasons your payment was unsuccessful, such as insufficient funds, the credit card is expired, triggered fraud protection measures, and so on. To find the specific reason, please contact the bank/company that issued you the credit card.
Once you’ve fixed the issue with your billing method or added a new one, you can pay any outstanding balance by going to your Account settings (desktop) or Settings (mobile app) > Billing & Payments and choosing Pay Now.
Tip:
Consider adding an alternative billing method to your Upwork account —it works like a backup in case something happens to your preferred billing method. This way, you’ll have two sources of funds, which can help prevent future account issues like this one.