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[verbal zephyr]

hi there!

[ionic whale]

Greetings

I was limited in characters, so had to condense the question

Assume I have an express accont and I need to tell the user what their net is going to be if they sell a ticket at 10 USD and add a 1 USD booking fee of their own, for instance.

[verbal zephyr]

Is there an endpoint or a reliable way to send something like a card type, account ID, currency and amount and get an estimated fee cost back?
no that's not possible. but you could try to guess the Stripe fee based on stripe.com/pricing, or check the fee on a succeeded PaymentIntent

[ionic whale]

Well, I need to know upfront so checking PI can't work

So, a followup. Since this isn't possible, is there a way with Express Connect that I can set a fixed net for the account and decide on the "total fee" (my own + stripe's included) myself?

Or would this require that I use platform charges + transfers?

Naturally, I would set this high enough so that whatever Stripe takes is just part of that fee and the rest goes to me

[verbal zephyr]

is there a way with Express Connect that I can set a fixed net for the account and decide on the "total fee" (my own + stripe's included) myself?
can you give a concrete example of this? I'm not sure I follow.

[ionic whale]

Stripe's fee is unknown. It's between 1 and 2.5% + some flat fee, for instance. So I decide on charging 5%, and I'll just earn whatever is left after Stripe has taken their cut, making Stripe fees invisible to the user, but making pricing much more obvious

Can I do this with Express Connect without having to redesign the system to use charges on the platform + transfers to express ?

Right now we use Standard Connect with Direct charges on the connected account and application fees

[verbal zephyr]

So I decide on charging 5%, and I'll just earn whatever is left after Stripe has taken their cut
sure that's possible, and in general our recommendation.

how are you accepting payments? Checkout Session, Payment Element, something else?

[ionic whale]

payment elements mostly

[verbal zephyr]

so when you create the PaymentIntent, increase the amount by 5%, and potentially change the application_fee_amount.

[ionic whale]

No, not like that. I can't change the amount of the charge, I need 5% of whatever the price is

(in this example)

but with direct charges, I don't control the fee Stripe charges, as that will always be deducted, so if I want to land on 5%, I need to know Stripe's fee, in that example

So I'm thinking this can only be done by using platform charges and then transferring whatever is left to the Express account?

i.e. if charge is 100, I'll send 95 to the express account and net whatever is left

[verbal zephyr]

one option is to use capture_method: manual when creating the PaymentIntent. this way you can see the exact Stripe fee that was used. and when you decide to capture the funds, you can update the application_fee_amount to get exactly what you want.

[ionic whale]

Ah this might work

I already do manual captures

This is good news, I will see if I can work with this

Did not know this was an option

I'm assuming the other option would be this: https://docs.stripe.com/connect/destination-charges

[round lance]

that's another way of using Connect yes. Not sure it really makes anything different, the same solutions suggested above for handling the fees would work. Ultimately the fee can be known in advance too, it's just not easy and require a fairly bespoke integration. You can inspect the details of the PaymentMethod before charging it and that combined with the pricing page and testing in test mode can help you write code that predicts what the fee will be. Or using manual capture as mentioned is also a good option

[ionic whale]

Given how fees are subject to change and may also change depending on what volume discount our account is under (and payment method!), I think trying to predict it "manually" is a non-starter. I'm going to try the manual capture method + update first. It seems like the integration with the least friction from our point of view.

[round lance]

sure but I'm talking about sticker pricing

[ionic whale]

sticker pricing?

Not sure what you mean

[round lance]

like the default pricing, not negotiated

[ionic whale]

of course, but even that changes and varies a lot depending on payment method, even between consumer and business card for the same card type

so it's a lot of "if-else"

and then there's Link

mobilepay

etc

[round lance]

totally yes. Technically all of that is predictable and testable, but I don't disagree it's horribly complex

[ionic whale]

I was hoping Stripe had done some of the heavy lifting on that side 😄 An endpoint that simulates cost for a given set of parameters would be very useful

[round lance]

my advice really is not do this and don't try to closely match your application fee to the stripe fee , and instead just take your own percentage cut and take the profit from that, but not ideal either. And sure, things would be a lot easier if we had things like that, I agree but it's just not something that's ever been prioritised

[ionic whale]

Argument here being that if I can do it, Stripe definitely also can (and better)

[ionic whale]

I don't see how I can do that when the Stripe fee is always deducted from the charge on the Express Account

If a customer charges 100 USD from a card, and stripe charges 2.5% if it's a business card and 1.5 if it's a consumer card, and I don't know, but I want their fee to be predictable, I don't see how I can get there without doing some math after the fact

It's a matter of having the total fee be predictable, not mine in particular

[round lance]

true, I think specifically for business versus consumer it's impossible to know that ahead of time. But also I don't think we charge those differently on sticker pricing so it's a moot point there. But if you're on negotiated/IC pricing then yes it might be different. And you can't know because we only know the type of card after charging it(it depends on the response from the card networks). Which is why when you're on special pricing you get aggregate reports for fees days later, not immediate information.

anyway not sure where I'm going with that. I sympathise, this area is definitely a pain to work with.

[ionic whale]

You definitely do have different prices on sticker price for consumer vs business?

Unless I misunderstand

[round lance]

maybe we do, that's fair. My team doesn't work with/look at any of that day-to-day

[ionic whale]

just the default /pricing page

[ionic whale]

Yea, hence why I think doing some math after manual capture will be easier than anything else

at least for us

[round lance]

only works for card payments (or other methods that suppose manual capture) but yes that is a good option

[ionic whale]

we only do card payments fortunately

or card-based wallets, but that's the same

[round lance]

cool. Also it only works if your accounts are not on IC pricing(if you are, then you have a null fee in the balance_transaction associated with a successful payment, and instead you refer to the delayed reports I mentioned earlier), but sounds like you're not

[ionic whale]

Not yet at least

[ionic whale]

Maybe I'm wrong. I was sure I saw business cards being charged more, but maybe that was actually in the discount offers I had and I just somehow got that confused for the "UK Card" listing above

It's probably inside and outside EEA I'm thinking of

but that's a similar problem anyway

[ionic whale]

This is worth remembering for sure, because the goal is definitely to aggregate enough volume for a discount plan

Maybe I can just do an "estimated" cost instead of 100% correct in our "net calculator" and say it depends on stripe's fees