Payments
Stripe Connect, PayPal seller onboarding, Tripistic fallback checkout, webhook verification, expiry sweeps, refunds, and reconciliation.
Tripistic supports three separate payment rails for traveller bookings:
- Your Stripe Connect account — your account must be fully enabled for charges and payouts.
- Your PayPal merchant account — connected through PayPal Partner Referrals seller onboarding and verified before checkout is enabled.
- Tripistic fallback checkout — the platform Stripe account is used when you do not have a ready provider. The first 50 settled fallback bookings are free; from booking 51 onward Tripistic records a 2% gateway fee per fallback booking.
Paddle is reserved for Tripistic subscription plans. Tripistic is not the merchant of record for an operator's traveller services; the operator remains responsible for pricing, taxes, refunds, chargebacks, and fulfilment.
Setup
- Go to Settings → Payments.
- Connect Stripe, or choose Connect PayPal and complete PayPal's business/seller onboarding.
- Wait for the provider status to show ready — a connected account with outstanding requirements is not a usable checkout rail.
- If you do not have a provider, enable the configured Tripistic fallback gateway.
- Confirm the currency matches your workspace currency and set the pending-payment expiry window.
- Run a sandbox/test booking and a controlled live booking before enabling customer traffic.
Payment modes
| Mode | Traveller experience | Use when |
|---|---|---|
| Full payment | Pays the total at checkout | Standard day tours |
| Deposit | Pays a fixed amount or percentage, balance later | Multi-day trips, high-value bookings |
| Pay later | Books now, receives a payment link | Agency, corporate, invoiced clients |
| Manual | Staff records an offline payment | Cash, bank transfer, walk-in |
How a payment confirms a booking
- The traveller completes checkout on the selected provider.
- Tripistic verifies the provider event, or verifies the server-side PayPal capture response after the PayPal return.
- The shared settlement transaction records the payment and moves the booking to
CONFIRMEDatomically. - A duplicate webhook, return, or retry is a safe no-op through provider-event/payment guards.
- The confirmation email is queued and the payment event is logged.
Browser redirects are never trusted by themselves. Stripe always requires a verified webhook; PayPal requires a verified capture response or signed webhook. A traveller who closes the tab immediately after paying is still reconciled when the provider signal arrives.
Why a payment might not confirm
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Paid at the provider, pending in Tripistic | Webhook/capture signal not delivered or endpoint unreachable | Check the provider event log and resend/reconcile the event |
| Signature verification failed | Wrong webhook secret for the environment | Re-copy the signing secret into Settings → Payments |
| Booking expired before payment landed | Expiry window shorter than the traveller took | Lengthen the window; recreate the booking |
Payment links
Send a payment link from any unpaid booking. The link is tied to the booking, respects the outstanding balance, and confirms the booking automatically once paid. Links can be resent, and travellers can retry a failed payment from their confirmation page without contacting you.
Pending expiry
Unpaid PENDING bookings hold seats. A scheduled sweep releases those seats when the expiry window elapses, cancels the booking, and records the reason. This is what stops abandoned checkouts from silently blocking your inventory.
Set the window to match your selling pattern: 30–60 minutes for high-demand day tours, 24–72 hours for multi-day trips awaiting a bank transfer.
Refunds
- Issue the refund in the provider that collected the booking — Stripe or PayPal — full or partial.
- Record it against the booking in Tripistic, or let the
charge.refundedwebhook update it. - Booking payment status moves to
REFUNDEDorPARTIALLY_REFUNDED. - Decide separately whether to cancel the booking; refunding does not automatically release seats, because partial refunds and goodwill gestures often accompany a trip that still runs.
Your cancellation terms govern traveller refunds. See the Refund Policy for Tripistic subscription refunds, which are a separate matter.
Chargebacks
Stripe or PayPal notifies you of disputes directly. Tripistic retains the booking record, participant details, waiver signatures, check-in records, and the full payment event log — the evidence you need to respond.
Multi-currency
The workspace currency sets the default. Stripe handles presentation currency and conversion where enabled on your account. Historical bookings keep the currency they were created in, so reports stay accurate after a currency change.
Reconciliation
Every booking stores its payment intent reference, amount, currency, status, and a complete event log. To reconcile:
- Filter bookings by date range and payment status.
- Export the result.
- Match provider payment/order references against your Stripe or PayPal payouts.
Revenue reporting distinguishes gross bookings, refunds, and net revenue, and separates confirmed revenue from pending.
Security
Tripistic never receives or stores full card numbers — hosted provider checkout collects payment details. Provider PCI and merchant-account obligations still apply to the operator. See the Security Policy.