What it is
A stay payment is a one-off charge you request from your guest for a direct booking: a balance due, an extra night, cleaning, anything you need to collect. It only works for direct bookings you create yourself. Bookings that arrive through a channel like Airbnb or Booking.com are paid through that channel instead, so you can't request a stay payment for those.
How it works for your guest
When you request a payment, your guest gets a secure payment link. If you have their email address on file, the link goes out automatically; you can also copy the link yourself or show it as a QR code, for example if you're handing it over in person.
On the payment page, your guest pays by card, Apple Pay, or Google Pay. If the request goes unpaid for 3 days, they get one reminder email.
How it works for you
This needs the same setup as security deposits: a Stripe payments account with charges enabled.
From the booking's page, open Stay payments and hit Request payment for an amount between €1 and €10,000. The request shows up in the booking's payment list with its status: awaiting payment, paid, or cancelled.
Only one request can be open per booking at a time. Need a different amount? Cancel the open request and create a new one. You can still request several payments over the life of a booking, an advance and then a balance, for instance, just not two open ones at once.
Confirming a booking on payment
When you create a direct booking, you choose how it gets confirmed: Confirmed right away, or Confirm on payment. With Confirm on payment, the booking holds its dates but stays unconfirmed: no booking report (RH) is filed with SES and no check-in invitation goes out yet.
The booking confirms itself automatically the moment the first payment succeeds. If you got paid outside Checkinea (bank transfer, cash) or you simply trust the guest, you can confirm it yourself from the booking's page instead. If a booking is still unconfirmed when check-in is 3 days away or less, you get a reminder email so it doesn't slip through.
What it costs
Checkinea's fee is max(€2.50, 1.5%) of the amount, plus 21% VAT, deducted straight from the payment. You receive the rest. Card-processing fees from the payment provider apply as well.
Refunds and disputes
Refunds don't happen from the booking's page. Open your Payments tab, the built-in Stripe view of all your payments, and refund from there, partially or in full. Any refund, or a dispute your guest raises with their card issuer, shows up as an annotation on that payment in the booking's payment list, so you still see the full picture from the booking itself.
The guest always gets back the full amount you refund. The fees from the original payment are not returned, so a refunded payment costs you the fees of a payment you no longer keep.
Refunds are paid from your Stripe account's available balance, not from your bank account. If you already received the payout, a card refund waits until new payments top up the balance, or Stripe settles the difference against your bank account.
Set your cancellation policy up front
Because fees are not returned, decide how you handle cancellations before you take payments, and tell your guest when they book. The two policies that work well:
- Make the booking non-refundable once paid.
- Offer refunds minus the fees already paid.
Absorbing the fees yourself is possible too, but make it a deliberate choice, not a surprise.
Learn more
See Your Stripe account for where the money actually lives, or contact us if you have questions.