Getting paid online
Connect your own GoCardless account, your own Stripe account, or both, from your organisation's page (the "Collect payments" and "Take cards" cards) — payments land straight in your own account, not ours. Once you've connected at least one, click Get payment link next to any unpaid booking on the Fees page and send the link to the hirer; the booking is marked paid automatically once the payment confirms. Our platform fee of 1% is deducted from each payment either way — GoCardless and Stripe each charge their own transaction fee on top, separately, which is theirs, not ours. The manual "mark as paid" checkbox still works too, for hirers who pay by cash or bank transfer — and ticking it no longer overwrites the record of a payment made online.
If you've connected both, the payment link offers bank transfer first and card second — a card costs you roughly double what a bank payment does on anything but a small amount, so the cheaper option is what the hirer sees first. They can still choose either.
By bank, the hirer chooses how to pay. Pay now from your bank is approved in their banking app and clears straight away, and sets up a Direct Debit at the same time — so a regular hirer booking again next week doesn't have to authorise anything a second time. Set up a Direct Debit is authorised once and collected over about three working days.
By card, there's no standing authorisation to set up — every card payment is its own, confirming in seconds rather than the few working days a bank payment takes to clear. It isn't offered as a way to set up anything for future sessions; a regular hirer wanting those collected automatically still needs Direct Debit for that.
A hirer who already has a Direct Debit with your group is offered pay with the one they already have: the page names the account and takes the payment on one click, with no bank details and no trip to GoCardless. It needs their email on the booking to recognise them — bookings that came through your hall request form already have it, and there's a hirer's email field on the booking form for ones you add yourself. It's optional; without it they simply get the ordinary options.
It isn't offered on a recurring booking, because that already collects each session automatically against its own Direct Debit — offering it as well would take the same session's money twice.
Because Direct Debit takes days to clear, the Fees page shows what each payment is actually doing rather than just paid or unpaid: Payment processing (on its way, nothing to chase), Payment failed — being retried automatically (GoCardless is trying again on the day most likely to work, so there's nobody to chase), Payment failed (didn't go through — the hirer can try again from the same link), or Payment charged back (their bank reversed it after the event, so the charge returns to unpaid by itself).