halbert-connect-fundsflows | Stripe Developers | Page 1

austere larkBOT Dec 22, 2023, 5:14 PM

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knotty zodiac Dec 22, 2023, 5:14 PM

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Hello 👋

What do you mean by the "billing configuration"?

dawn lance Dec 22, 2023, 5:27 PM

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I was trying to create a customer portal for a connect account and received the following error response:

You can't create a portal session in test mode until you save your customer portal settings in test mode at

I was able to get the API call to work when going to the connect account owner's settings and manually updating the customer portal settings. However, I want this to be set up by default. Does that make sense?

knotty zodiac Dec 22, 2023, 5:29 PM

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Yes, unfortunately you cannot "inherit" this. However, this really begs a larger question. How are you creating payments on the Express account? We do not recommend Direct Charges on Express accounts. In all our recommended integrations the Customers (and therfore the Customer Portals) would exist only on the Platform

dawn lance Dec 22, 2023, 5:36 PM

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This is interesting. Can you explain why you do not recommend direct charges on Express accounts?

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We've chosen this method for accounting simplicity

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Vs. charging everything to the platform account and then transferring to the connect account

knotty zodiac Dec 22, 2023, 5:38 PM

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Direct charges mean the Express account is the one responsible for the payment and all things related to it (such as disputes). However, they have limited access to the Stripe Dashboard and therefore cannot perform all the necessary actions to handle situations like disputes.

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They are not full Stripe accounts

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Also reporting is much more difficult because you need to pull transactions for each Express account to get insights into your financials

dawn lance Dec 22, 2023, 5:39 PM

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So if there is a disput on a charge made to the connect account, the connect account owner cannot contest the dispute?

knotty zodiac Dec 22, 2023, 5:39 PM

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If they are an Express account, no

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If they are Standard, then yes

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because they have full access to the Stripe Dashboard

dawn lance Dec 22, 2023, 5:40 PM

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Can we contest the dispute on their behalf?

knotty zodiac Dec 22, 2023, 5:41 PM

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You can but you have to manually check each account

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Also you as the platform are still responsible for negative balances on the Express accounts and this can make refunds much more difficult since the funds aren't starting in your balance

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And you cannot use Radar if you want fraud protection

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Generally it's just a bad idea

dawn lance Dec 22, 2023, 5:42 PM

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Understood

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Another reason we chose to charge directly to the express is because we are holding security deposits, and thought it would be cleaner to hold them in a specific account

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Do you agree?

knotty zodiac Dec 22, 2023, 5:43 PM

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We recommend either Destination Charges https://stripe.com/docs/connect/destination-charges or separate charges & transfers https://stripe.com/docs/connect/separate-charges-and-transfers

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I don't see that as cleaner, no.

dawn lance Dec 22, 2023, 5:44 PM

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Okay that is good to know

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So with destination charges, if we are charging a customer $1,000 and specify an application fee of $100, the connect account gets the balance?

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I.e. the account account gets $900?

knotty zodiac Dec 22, 2023, 5:47 PM

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Correct

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We have a fairly detailed graph of this funds flow here: https://stripe.com/docs/connect/destination-charges#flow-of-funds-app-fee

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Alternativelly you could use the tgransfer_data.amount to specify the amount you want to pass to the Express account. That would follow this funds flow: https://stripe.com/docs/connect/destination-charges#flow-of-funds-amount

dawn lance Dec 22, 2023, 5:51 PM

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Can you help me understand this chart? So we want to charge a user $10

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Stripe takes a $0.59 fee

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Platform is supposed to get a $1.23 fee

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I guess the confusion is who bears responsibiltiy for the stripe fee? Does the platform receive the $1.23 - $0.59 = $0.64, or does the connected account receive $10 - $1.23 - $0.59 = $8.18?

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Just trying to figure out the net each party receives

knotty zodiac Dec 22, 2023, 5:53 PM

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The platfrom is responsible for the stripe fees

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Then, Stripe fees (0.59 USD) are subtracted from the application_fee_amount and the remaining funds (0.64 USD) are added to your platform account’s balance.

dawn lance Dec 22, 2023, 5:54 PM

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Understood

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Okay that makes sense

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And how is the following proposal different?

Alternativelly you could use the tgransfer_data.amount to specify the amount you want to pass to the Express account. That would follow this funds flow: https://stripe.com/docs/connect/destination-charges#flow-of-funds-amount

Creating destination charges on your platform

With Connect, you can create charges on your platform account, take fees, and then transfer remaining funds to your connected accounts.

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Effectively you specify the transfer amount instead of the application fee?

knotty zodiac Dec 22, 2023, 5:55 PM

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Correct

dawn lance Dec 22, 2023, 5:55 PM

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So effectively another way of saying the same thing

knotty zodiac Dec 22, 2023, 5:55 PM

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The paragraphs above each diagram explain how each of them work and how they differ

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In the second case the funds are retained by your platform rather than going to the connected account and coming back

dawn lance Dec 22, 2023, 5:57 PM

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In the first example, we say the platform gets $1.23 (minus stripe fee) and the connect account gets the remainder.
In the second example, we say the connect account gets $8.77 and the platform account gets the remainder minus the Stripe fee

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In other words, in first example the API input is the $10 + $1.23 application fee, and in the second the input is $10 + $8.77 transfer_data.amount

knotty zodiac Dec 22, 2023, 5:59 PM

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The customer is charged $10 in each situation. These are just different ways to achieve something similar that work slightly differently and apply to different use cases

dawn lance Dec 22, 2023, 5:59 PM

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got it

knotty zodiac Dec 22, 2023, 6:00 PM

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It helps to think of this as how it applies to your platform and connected accounts

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The application_fee_amount is your Platform taking a fee from the Connected Account in return for some service (for example: providing a web UI that gets them payments). The transfer_data.amount is the same approach but there are minor differences that we call out in the doc.

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When using an application_fee_amount, know that:

The amount collected as an application fee is capped at the total transaction amount.

The application_fee_amount is always processed in the same currency as the transaction.

Your platform pays the Stripe fee after the application_fee_amount is transferred to your account.

No additional Stripe fees are applied to the amount.

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When using transfer_data[amount], know that:

The amount is capped at the total transaction amount.

The amount is always processed in the same currency as the transaction.

Your platform separately pays the Stripe fees on the charge.

No additional Stripe fees are applied to the amount.

To calculate fees after a payment is created (often for reporting purposes), you need to retrieve the PaymentIntent and subtract the transfer_data[amount] from the amount on the PaymentIntent.

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