Money
Getting paid online
Every issued invoice gets its own payment page, and your client settles it with a card or a phone — through your own provider account, or through one connected here.
Issue an invoice and it gets a payment link of its own. Send the link, and whoever owes you can pay it without an account, a login, or anything to install. What they see is who is asking, what for, how much — and the ways it can be paid.
No card details ever reach this product
Every button sends the payer to the provider's own hosted page. That is a deliberate limit rather than a shortcut: nothing here can leak a card number because nothing here has ever seen one. It is also why Apple Pay and Google Pay work with nothing to set up — they are drawn by the provider's page for anybody whose device offers them. Switch them on with your provider and they appear.
Which providers
| Provider | Where | Connect through us |
|---|---|---|
| Stripe | Most of the world | Yes — 0.5% |
| Mercado Pago | Latin America | Mexico only — 0.5% |
| Payfast | South Africa | Yes — 0.5% |
| PayPal | Most of the world | Your own account |
| Razorpay | India | Your own account |
| Paystack | Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Kenya | Your own account |
| Xendit | South-East Asia | Your own account |
Two arrangements, and the choice is yours
Use your own credentials with any provider and it costs nothing — the money goes straight from your client to you and we are only told about it. Or connect through us, which is one authorisation instead of copying keys, and half a percent of each payment comes here. Three providers can be connected that way; for the rest, your own account is the only arrangement there is. Whichever you pick, you are the merchant: the payment lands in your account and your client sees your name.
The rate is fixed on a connection the moment it is made, so if we ever change what we charge, what you already agreed to does not move.
Per currency, and per entity
A gateway says which currencies it is for. An agency billing in three rarely collects them through one account — Payfast takes rand and nothing else, Razorpay takes rupees — so an invoice is only ever offered the gateways that can actually take its money. A button that fails at the provider is worse than one that was never there, because it fails in front of the person you are asking to pay. A gateway can also belong to one legal entity, and that entity's own beats the organisation's.
How a payment is recorded
The provider's notification records the payment — not the customer coming back
Somebody returning from a payment page proves nothing: they might have closed the tab, lost signal, or simply typed the address. So the return page says a confirmation is on its way and never says paid, and what actually settles an invoice is the signed notification the provider sends us. Set the callback address with your provider when you connect it — until you do, nothing will ever be recorded.
- Settled at what was paid, not at what you receive
- Your client pays 1,180 and the gateway remits 1,146 after its fee. The invoice is settled at 1,180, because that is what they paid — recording the smaller figure would leave the invoice permanently short and have somebody chasing a client who paid in full. The fee turns up separately, in the gateway's own balance feed or in the difference when the settlement reaches your bank.
- The same notification twice changes nothing
- Providers deliver at least once and often more. The second one finds the payment already recorded and does nothing.
- Part payments are recorded as what they are
- A notification for less than was asked settles that much and leaves the rest outstanding. One for MORE is refused outright — it means something was misread, and crediting it would overstate what your client has paid.
What happens after the money moves
The provider keeps a fee and settles the rest days later, batched with other payments — which is why the bank line matches no invoice. Settlements and saved cards covers reconciling that batch, posting the fee as the expense it is, refunding through the provider, and the card a customer may agree to leave on file.
The invoice is settled at gross, never at what the provider will remit
A customer pays 1,180 and the gateway settles 1,146 after its fee. Recording the 1,146 would leave the invoice permanently 34 short, the debtor would never clear, and somebody would chase a client who paid in full.