The short answer is usually a day or two after your phone arrives and gets checked — but that answer comes with a significant caveat that's easy to miss, and it changes how you should read every payment-speed promise on the site.
Photo by Jordan Benton on Pexels
SellMyMobile doesn't actually pay you
This is the single most important thing to understand, and it's the reason payment times vary so much.
SellMyMobile.com is a comparison site, not a recycler. It's the same category of business as GadgetRank: it lists offers from third-party recyclers and buyers, and routes you to whichever one you pick. It doesn't take delivery of your phone, doesn't inspect it, and doesn't send the money.
So "how long does SellMyMobile take to pay?" is, strictly speaking, the wrong question. The right question is: how long does the specific recycler you were matched with take to pay? SellMyMobile's role ends when it hands you off.
That distinction matters because the answer varies enormously depending on which company on their panel you end up selling to.
What SellMyMobile officially says
Their own FAQ states that payment is usually sent a day or two after the buyer receives and inspects your phone.
As a description of how the process is supposed to work, that's accurate and reasonable. The typical sequence is:
- You accept an offer and are directed to the recycler
- You post the device, usually with a prepaid label
- The recycler receives it and inspects it against the condition you declared
- If the inspection matches, payment is issued
The "day or two" refers only to step 4. It doesn't include postage time, and it doesn't include any delay at the inspection stage — which is where things actually go wrong.
What real sellers report
Review data tells a more mixed story than the official line.
Some sellers are paid within two days of their device arriving, exactly as advertised. That's a genuine outcome and it happens regularly.
Others report waiting weeks. The recurring themes in negative reviews are consistent enough to be worth taking seriously:
- Revised offers after the device arrives. The recycler receives the phone, downgrades the condition assessment, and offers less than the original quote. You can usually reject and have the device returned, but that restarts the clock entirely.
- Slow or unresponsive recyclers. Devices marked as received with no payment following for an extended period, and support that's difficult to reach.
- Inspection delays. The phone arrives promptly, then sits in a queue before anyone assesses it.
None of these are universal, and it would be misleading to present them as typical. But they're frequent enough, and specific enough to particular companies on the panel, that "a day or two" should be read as a best case rather than an expectation.
The variance is the point
Here's the honest framing: SellMyMobile's payment speed isn't one number, because SellMyMobile isn't one company. It's a directory of many, and their operational standards differ.
Two people can both sell through SellMyMobile in the same week, with the same phone, and have completely different experiences — because they clicked through to different recyclers. One gets paid in 48 hours. The other spends three weeks chasing.
This is exactly why we argue that sorting purely by price is the wrong default. The highest headline offer on any comparison site — ours included — is not automatically the best outcome if the company behind it is slow to pay or prone to revising quotes on arrival.
How to protect yourself, whichever site you use
The practical steps are the same regardless of which comparison service you're using:
Research the specific recycler, not just the platform. Once you know which company you're being routed to, look up that company's reviews. The comparison site's own rating tells you little about the individual buyer on the other end. Our guide to the best phone recyclers in the UK covers which companies have consistent track records.
Declare condition accurately. The most common cause of a revised offer is a genuine mismatch between the stated and actual condition. Be honest about scratches, screen marks, and battery health up front — a slightly lower initial quote that gets paid without dispute beats a high quote that gets downgraded.
Understand what triggers a downgrade. Grading standards vary between recyclers, and the same phone can land in different bands at different companies. Our explainer on how phone recycling prices are calculated covers what assessors actually look at.
Use tracked postage and keep the receipt. If a device goes missing, proof of postage is what resolves it.
Prepare the phone properly before sending. Sign out of iCloud or your Google account, factory reset, and remove the SIM. Our guide to selling your phone safely covers the data-security steps that matter.
If speed is your actual priority
If getting paid quickly matters more to you than squeezing out the last few pounds, don't optimise for the top of the price list.
Some recyclers offer same-day or next-day payment on receipt as a specific commitment rather than a vague "a day or two". Our guides to same-day payment when selling a phone and selling your phone instantly cover the options where payment timing is contractual rather than aspirational.
It's a real trade-off. The fastest-paying recyclers are not usually the highest-paying ones. But a £10 lower offer that lands in your account on Tuesday may well be worth more to you than a £10 higher one that arrives, after two chase emails, at the end of the month.
How this compares to other routes
The pattern isn't unique to SellMyMobile. Every comparison site in this market sits between you and a panel of third-party buyers, and every one of them inherits the payment-speed characteristics of whoever is on that panel. Our comparison of the main UK phone recycling routes sets out how the different models work, and our head-to-head on Compare and Recycle versus musicMagpie illustrates the difference between a comparison platform and a direct buyer — musicMagpie buys your phone itself, which removes the middle step entirely and makes payment timing much more predictable.
That's the genuine structural advantage of selling direct to a recycler: one company, one process, one party accountable for paying you.
The bottom line
SellMyMobile's official answer — payment a day or two after your device is received and inspected — is accurate as a description of the intended process, and plenty of sellers get exactly that.
But SellMyMobile is a comparison site, not the buyer. It doesn't control payment speed, because it never handles your phone or your money. Real-world experiences range from two days to several weeks, and where you land depends almost entirely on which recycler from their panel you were matched with, not on SellMyMobile itself.
Check the individual buyer before you post. That one step does more to determine how quickly you're paid than any comparison site's headline promise.
Compare live prices from UK phone recyclers →
Frequently asked questions
Ready to get the best price?
Compare prices now →