Stripe Anyone?

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Highlands John

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I have my own PMS which I've developed over the past 5 years. It pretty much does everything I need from allowing guests to book dinner at the local Inn online, through taking donations for a local litter pick to printing check-in cards, guest bills and end-of-month audit reports.
It's awesome (and I know that because I designed and wrote it
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), however it has always taken deposits through Palpay which is very easy to set up, but quite expensive and inflexible.
Then after joining FreeToBook (I'll probably come back to that in another thread) I discovered Stripe. Stripe is an online card processor, but it's easy to use, there's no merchant account they just transfer the money to your account like PP, and Stripe stores the customers card details so if for example the guest does a no-show you can just charge their card through stripe.
It's made me revamp the way we take bookings a bit, I've introduced T&Cs (yes, I know you're all shocked that we didn't have them) so people can't argue about cancellation charges.
We've been hit by a few expensive cancellations in the past couple of years.....no more!!!
 
Yes. We have Stripe. It came with our new webpages along with a booking engine we don't like.
Stripe doesn't take tax so we have to charge tax when they arrive which we don't like doing. We don't get to see anything of the credit card info so we have to make sure to swipe their card when they arrive. We have a confirmation email that goes out and clearly states that they will owe taxes upon arrival. What kind of welcome is that?!? We also have square and like it much better. We plan to switch our booking over and use square for everything. That said we don't do OTAs just our own website, Airbnb, and InnRewards.com. Air does it all and hands out our share to the bank and the other forwards the guests to our own website.
 
BedPosts.org.uk is the Forum (closed - accommodation providers only) and The BedPosts Business Club uses Stripe to take dues payments. They like it.
 
Yes. We have Stripe. It came with our new webpages along with a booking engine we don't like.
Stripe doesn't take tax so we have to charge tax when they arrive which we don't like doing. We don't get to see anything of the credit card info so we have to make sure to swipe their card when they arrive. We have a confirmation email that goes out and clearly states that they will owe taxes upon arrival. What kind of welcome is that?!? We also have square and like it much better. We plan to switch our booking over and use square for everything. That said we don't do OTAs just our own website, Airbnb, and InnRewards.com. Air does it all and hands out our share to the bank and the other forwards the guests to our own website..
Not a problem for us as we don't have an additional tax to charge guests, but I can see that would be a deal breaker.
I don't see Stripe card details either, but I can still make charges to the card. Sounds like your web pages are not utilising the full Stripe interface to create customers.
 
Yes. We have Stripe. It came with our new webpages along with a booking engine we don't like.
Stripe doesn't take tax so we have to charge tax when they arrive which we don't like doing. We don't get to see anything of the credit card info so we have to make sure to swipe their card when they arrive. We have a confirmation email that goes out and clearly states that they will owe taxes upon arrival. What kind of welcome is that?!? We also have square and like it much better. We plan to switch our booking over and use square for everything. That said we don't do OTAs just our own website, Airbnb, and InnRewards.com. Air does it all and hands out our share to the bank and the other forwards the guests to our own website..
Not a problem for us as we don't have an additional tax to charge guests, but I can see that would be a deal breaker.
I don't see Stripe card details either, but I can still make charges to the card. Sounds like your web pages are not utilising the full Stripe interface to create customers.
.
Probably. I'm not techy at all!
 
Yes we uses all the time but you have to beware of fraud charges, the part that sucks about stripe is that they do not perform any security checks, the blindly accept all the charges as they come in…
It's quite stupid and it's always the merchant the picks up the $30 bill for each refused to transaction.
Look into security verifications, they only cost a few cents per check (sometimes even free if below a certain amount) and prevent idiots from doing fake charges.
Usually it's charges by people that will not be staying at your place at all, it's basically scammers testing to see if the credit card is good or not.
Hope this helps

Sorry for being so negative, we got over 500$ in charges and stripe doesn't have a support line and you're left hanging.....
 
Yes we uses all the time but you have to beware of fraud charges, the part that sucks about stripe is that they do not perform any security checks, the blindly accept all the charges as they come in…
It's quite stupid and it's always the merchant the picks up the $30 bill for each refused to transaction.
Look into security verifications, they only cost a few cents per check (sometimes even free if below a certain amount) and prevent idiots from doing fake charges.
Usually it's charges by people that will not be staying at your place at all, it's basically scammers testing to see if the credit card is good or not.
Hope this helps

Sorry for being so negative, we got over 500$ in charges and stripe doesn't have a support line and you're left hanging......
Oh, not noticed that.
I was a bit surprised to see that ccv checking is an option, I've also turned on postcode/zip checking, but I can see that's not going to stop all scammers.
 
Yes we uses all the time but you have to beware of fraud charges, the part that sucks about stripe is that they do not perform any security checks, the blindly accept all the charges as they come in…
It's quite stupid and it's always the merchant the picks up the $30 bill for each refused to transaction.
Look into security verifications, they only cost a few cents per check (sometimes even free if below a certain amount) and prevent idiots from doing fake charges.
Usually it's charges by people that will not be staying at your place at all, it's basically scammers testing to see if the credit card is good or not.
Hope this helps

Sorry for being so negative, we got over 500$ in charges and stripe doesn't have a support line and you're left hanging......
Hi Alex,
Stripe does provide some basic fraud protection. Additionally, there are several settings to help prevent fraudulent charges and avoid disputes (i.e. card verification code and address verification checks). Our software integrates with over 60 different payment gateways and Stripe stacks up very highly against the rest. Also, if fraudulent activity or disputes make up more than 1% of your total transactions Stripe will most likely reach out to help.
 
Yes. We have Stripe. It came with our new webpages along with a booking engine we don't like.
Stripe doesn't take tax so we have to charge tax when they arrive which we don't like doing. We don't get to see anything of the credit card info so we have to make sure to swipe their card when they arrive. We have a confirmation email that goes out and clearly states that they will owe taxes upon arrival. What kind of welcome is that?!? We also have square and like it much better. We plan to switch our booking over and use square for everything. That said we don't do OTAs just our own website, Airbnb, and InnRewards.com. Air does it all and hands out our share to the bank and the other forwards the guests to our own website..
Hi Duff,
Yes, unfortunately Stripe does not handle taxes. Any taxes and/or fees need to be passed to Stripe in one lump sum. You should be able to set-up taxes in your booking engine. Which one are you using?
 
Stripe and its close rival Braintree are great, they make the whole process of taking and storing cards in a safe way a total breeze. Both have security checks if you choose to set them although if you go too strict it will hurt conversion slightly as some valid cards might get rejected.
Did you know that on the OTA you can give any card number and the booking is made instantly, Stripe tests each card before saving it so if it saves ok it "should" be ok to charge.
You can pre authorise too to check and hold funds prior to arrival :)
 
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