We've looked carefully into the different card processing services and have chosen to partner with Stripe because it offers one of the best services around, at competitive prices for class providers.

What is Stripe?

Stripe is a market leading online payment processor. It's similar to Paypal except with lower fees (1.5% + 20p per transaction) and advanced features that have made it popular with big brands like Deliveroo, Asos and Squarespace. Their customer support is also available to you 24/7, and you can use it for invoicing customers for other parts of your business.

You can sign up for your own Stripe account here. 

Payments made via Happity go directly into your Stripe account. This means you can access your payments as soon as they've been processed (within 3-5 days), and also means you have complete access to additional tools to view all of your payment history, create invoices, and to connect your sales information up to accounting packages like Xero - saving precious admin time.

We know that every little bit makes a difference when you're running a small independent business. By doing the best we can for your business, it's the best we can do for ours too. 🙂
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Why not Paypal?

The simple answer is that Paypal will cost you a lot more, whilst not necessarily giving customers a better experience.

Paypal charges 2.9% plus 30p per transaction. So compared with Stripe’s 1.5% plus 20p transaction you lose on both the percentage and one-off costs*.

To put that into real terms, if you accept a booking for £5, you’d pay 45p to Paypal but just 30p to Stripe – saving 40%!

It couldn't be easier to sign up with Stripe - it literally takes about 2 minutes to register. Sign up here. 

What about refunds?

There are no charges for processing a refund, but unfortunately neither Paypal nor Stripe will return your original transaction fees. This is because significant costs are incurred in processing a card payment in terms that can't be recovered.

Stripe does give you the option to process a partial refund - so in instances where you're refunding upon request from a customer, you can choose to cover your costs by deducting a small admin fee - you'll just need to make sure this is clearly stated in your T&Cs.

In general, it's a good idea to take larger transactions if possible, as this will help keep your transaction costs down.

Example of fees:

£5 ==> £0.27 ==> 5.4% (1.5% plus 20p)

£10 ==> £0.34 ==> 3.4% (1.5% plus 20p)

£50 ==> £0.90 ==> 1.8% (1.5% plus 20p)

*Data correct at 10/04/2023