#Grygalius
earnest shard
Hello! Thanks for taking the time!
Basically these are our use-cases:
- A user creates an account on our application and we create an associated “digital wallet” to store money in.
- A user is able to to “top-up” his “digital wallet” via bank card (or other payment methods) from which we will be able to charge from.
- The user uses our application and we charge from his “digital wallet”
- It is possible that final price for the services are clarified later on, and we would need to charge “additionally”.
- When an insufficient balance occurs, we would like a possibility to either deduct his wallet to a balance OR charge his private payment method (bank card).
The basic clarifications I need is:
- Is this possible using your services and what would be the suggested setup?
- Fee/cost structure (variable/processing and others) - do we need to pay for each user wallet? Do user still pay only upon top-up?
primal valley
A user creates an account on our application and we create an associated “digital wallet” to store money in.
There's no 'wallet' concept at Stripe. Accounts can process transactions and accumulate a balance (with certain limits) but there's no wallet facility that you can easily charge.
I think that's your initial stumbling block really
For example, you can only accumulate balances for ~90 days in most countries: https://stripe.com/docs/connect/manual-payouts
earnest shard
So you can't create an account on behalf of the user and store a balance on each individual acount?
primal valley
You can create accounts for your users, yep. That's Connect: https://stripe.com/docs/connect
And yes, those accounts can have balance from transactions or transfers (from you the 'platform'). But those balances can't be held indefinitely (see initial link)
earnest shard
So basically I'm able to create an account via Connect, handle a "payment" so they would have a balance (as you said, cannot be indefinite), and I'm able to then "charge" the account from that balance
?
primal valley
Yep, that's called account debits: https://stripe.com/docs/connect/account-debits
There's regional/locale limitations (highlighted on that page)
earnest shard
Gotcha. So basically, we cannot build a "wallet", so our only option would be to use the "traditional" flow and:
- Create accounts on behalf of users
- Facilitate adding/linking payment methods to said accounts
- Charge those accounts directly with each transaction
Does that sound right?
primal valley
Yep, that sounds right!
earnest shard
In that case, could you clarify some pricing questions that come up
From our understanding, as we're planning to work with Swiss users, the underlying costs are:
- 0.3 CHF per transaction
- 2.9% of the transaction value per transaction
Are there any other things we need to take into account?
primal valley
If you're using Connect, there's additional fees: https://stripe.com/connect/pricing
Not sure what payment methods you're intending to support, but there's differing fees for non-card payments: https://stripe.com/pricing#pricing-details
earnest shard
From my understanding of our use case and the "traditional flow", standard accounts wouldn't be sufficient for us, correct? We would probably need to user Express accounts?
The current payment methods we're interested in are mainly traditional bank cards (using the intercharge++ pricing model for example)
primal valley
Yep, you'd need Express or Custom if you intend to use account debits
earnest shard
One thing which isn't clear from the provided link regarding Express and Custom accounts - it says that each "active" user costs 2$ per month when payouts are sent to their bank account. But we wouldn't be sending payouts to those accounts, we would only charge them for the services they use from us.
Can you clarify whether we would actually need to a pay additionally per each "user"
primal valley
I'm not sure tbh. For pricing, you're better off speaking with support. We're better suited for technical/integration Qs: https://support.stripe.com/contact
earnest shard
Roger, thank you so much anyway, this was really helpful!
primal valley
Sure, np! Happy to help