Taking card payments

Paid when they book

When you connect a Stripe account, customers pay by card at the moment they book. You don’t chase anyone for money, people who have already paid rarely fail to turn up, and if they cancel in time the refund goes back to their card automatically.

The money lands in your own Stripe account and Stripe pays it out to your bank. You keep full access to your Stripe dashboard.

Without Stripe, everything still works, but customers pay on site. You write a short note on how to pay (cash at the desk, a bank transfer), it goes into every confirmation email, and you mark each booking as paid when the money arrives.

Cash, card or both

You don’t have to choose one or the other. Under Payment Settings you decide what customers are offered:

• Online card payment: everyone pays when they book.
• Cash / on-site payment: nobody pays online. Your instructions tell them how to pay.
• Both (cash and card): the customer picks at checkout.

Who receives the money

Card payments go to a legal entity: the company or association that sells to your customers and connects its own Stripe account. Most organizations need only one.

If you sell through more than one (say an association runs the courts and a company runs the classes), add each one under Legal entities, then choose under Who bills what which one sells bookings, which sells events and which sells memberships.

Anything with no entity assigned is Pay on site only, whatever you choose in the payment settings.

What it costs and what it needs

Cost. Card payments carry a platform fee (3.6% as standard), which Stripe takes off each payment automatically. Stripe’s own card fee is separate. Once a month you get an invoice for the platform fees under Reports › Platform invoices. Cash and on-site payments cost nothing.

What you need:

• a connected Stripe account (Connect Stripe) with the setup finished on Stripe’s side,
• the entity’s billing details: name, email and address,
• in Hungary, automatic invoicing as well: card payments only switch on once every payment can be invoiced.

Memberships always need Stripe, because they renew and charge automatically. Bookings and events can run on cash for as long as you like.