hmlh7 - separate charges and transfers

[vapid delta]

Good questions.

1. The first question is up to you and how you want to manage your available balance. We do have a parameter, source_transaction that will delay the payment until the funds actually land in your account balance. If you don't use it, you will want to make sure you keep enough money in your available balance to be able to pay out whenever you make the transfer. https://stripe.com/docs/connect/charges-transfers#transfer-availability

Not sure on when to make the manual payout. Checking if we have guidance on that.

[strong dock]

from the documentation it seems like source_transaction can only be hooked up to one charge, which won't necessarily work for me because I have multiple users paying for one "ride"

I can keep enough in the account to pay out connected accounts but does that leave me vulnerable?

[vapid delta]

Ah thank you for clarifying, I missed that detail at first. In that case you still could use source_transaction, but you would need a transfer for each payment.

To clarify, vulnerable in what way?

[strong dock]

Is there something wrong/bad with doing a separate transfer for each payment? We need payouts to hit connected accounts as one transaction, but we can use manual payouts to do that right? I ask just because here: https://stripe.com/docs/connect/charges#types it suggests that many-to-one relationships should use separate charges and transfers

and in terms of "vulnerable", I mean is there a possibility that I transfer money from my own connected account and then something goes wrong with the payment? Then I would be on the hook for the $ I transfered

[vapid delta]

This setup definitely sounds appropriate for separate charges and transfers. You can still have all of the funds from one "ride" be a part of one payout regardless of whether you do one transfer for the payments from the ride or multiple

And thank you for the clarification. I have to answer another user right now but I am thinking about how you might be vulnerable that way and will get back to you.

[strong dock]

Thanks, really appreciate your help!

As a follow-up, if I'm doing a transfer for each individual charge what is the point in using separate charges and transfers? Why wouldn't I just use destination charges?

[vapid delta]

Apologies, it looks like I misread earlier messages. For some reason I thought that this was each person paying and then paying those funds out to multiple merchants.

Destination charges would work perfectly fine here as long as it is you and one merchant that are splitting the payment.

With destination charges that would also mean that you don't have to manually manage your available balance before transferring the funds out of your platform account.

At which point, I think the main question is when to do the manual payouts. If you want to do this as often as possible, you can probably listen to the balance.availible event and pay out when funds become available there.

[strong dock]

Ok this is very helpful. The only reason I was going for separate charges/transfers was because that's what the link^^ suggested but I agree with you that destination charges would be appropriate. I'll look into the balance.available event. I need a webhook for that?