A lien balance represents an amount you owe to Chipper that will be automatically collected when funds are added to your wallet. This balance is created when certain fees (e.g., maintenance fees) cannot be successfully collected due to insufficient funds in your wallet.

When a fee is due, Chipper will initially try to deduct it from your wallet balance. During this attempt, you'll receive a notification about the attempted deduction, regardless of whether it succeeds or fails.

If your wallet doesn't have enough funds to cover the fee, you'll receive a notification explaining that the attempt was unsuccessful.

After the initial unsuccessful attempt, the system will create a lien balance for the owed amount. This lien balance represents the fee(s) you owe and must settle. The amount owed will be automatically deducted the next time you add funds to your wallet.

When you add money to your wallet, any existing lien balance will be automatically deducted from the newly added funds to settle the owed fees.

If your wallet balance in the currency of the fee owed is insufficient to cover the fee, our system will automatically initiate a currency conversion and deduct it from your alternative wallet. This means that if a balance of zero or an insufficient amount exists in the required currency, the equivalent amount will be automatically converted and deducted from your available wallet balance in another currency.

For example, if you owe a fee of USD 5 and have a zero balance in your USD wallet, the system will automatically convert and deduct the equivalent of USD 5 from your NGN wallet, provided sufficient funds are available. In the event that your NGN wallet also lacks sufficient funds to cover the 5 USD fee, the maximum available amount will be deducted, and the remaining balance will be added to your LIEN (Amount Owed) balance on your Chipper account.