Connect Stripe to take deposits

When a client pays a deposit, the money goes straight into your own Stripe account. We never hold it and we take no cut; Stripe charges its card fee, as it would for anyone. Until this is connected, a service with a deposit still takes bookings, just without the deposit.

1. Open Getting paid

   Shop → Getting paid. Only an owner can connect, change or disconnect where the shop is paid.

2. Connect Stripe

   Connect Stripe takes you to Stripe's site to set up an account of your own — about ten minutes. Where the screen also offers I already use Stripe, that signs in to an existing account in about thirty seconds instead. An account that another booking system manages cannot be connected; set one up of your own, so nobody else controls it.

3. Answer what Stripe asks

   Stripe is a regulated payments company and has to know who it is paying, so it asks for things a booking app never would: a photo of your passport or driving licence, your National Insurance number, your bank details, a sentence about what you do and a website or social page. It is asking for its own reasons, not ours, and we never see the answers. If you stop halfway, come back to this screen and pick up where you left off.

4. Wait for Stripe to say yes

   Back on Getting paid the screen says where things stand: Taking payments and Paying out to your bank. Checking usually takes minutes, occasionally a day or two. Deposits switch on the moment Stripe is happy — nothing to do here. If Stripe wants one more thing, the screen lists it under What Stripe still wants, and Check with Stripe again refreshes it.

After it is connected

Set a deposit on each service that needs one — see Take a deposit on a service. Stripe pays your bank on its own schedule, usually a few days after each payment. Refunds for cancellations are made from the app, from the money in your Stripe account; anything else about the account, including a dispute, is handled in Stripe itself.