Getting paid — your own Stripe account
How connecting Stripe works, what the badges mean, and where your money goes — everything a course creator needs about payments.
What connecting Stripe does
Out of the box, course sales run through the platform’s payment account. Once you connect your own Stripe account, every sale is charged directly on your account: the money is yours from the moment of purchase, payouts go to your bank, and refunds, receipts and disputes are handled under your business name. If the platform charges a service fee, it’s taken automatically out of each sale — the exact percentage is shown on your Payments settings before you connect.
How to connect (about 5–10 minutes)
Go to Admin → Payments and press Connect with Stripe. You’ll be taken to Stripe’s secure onboarding — the platform never sees your banking details. Have these ready:
- Your legal/business details (individuals and sole traders are fine too)
- A bank account for payouts
- A government ID for Stripe’s identity verification
When you finish, Stripe sends you back to your Payments settings automatically. You can leave and resume anytime — pressing the button again continues where you left off, it never creates a second account.
What the status badges mean
- Details submitted — you completed Stripe’s onboarding form. Stripe may still be verifying your information.
- Charges enabled — the switch that matters: from this moment new sales are charged on your account. Until it’s green, sales keep running through the platform, so nothing ever breaks in between.
- Payouts enabled — Stripe verified your bank account and will transfer your balance on its payout schedule.
Badges usually flip within a minute or two of finishing onboarding. If they look stale, press Refresh status — it re-reads your account live from Stripe.
Fees — who pays what
Two separate things come out of a sale on your connected account:
- The platform fee (if any) — the percentage shown on your Payments page, collected automatically per sale.
- Stripe’s processing fee — Stripe’s standard card fees, charged to you as the merchant, visible per payment in your Stripe dashboard.
Everything else is yours and accrues in your Stripe balance.
Refunds
Refund a purchase from your course’s Students list — the ↩ button next to the paid amount. A refund is always the full amount: the student gets their money back through Stripe, any platform fee on that sale is returned to the student’s refund too, and the student’s enrollment is revoked. Refunds can’t be undone — the student would simply buy again.
Payouts, balance and disputes
Press Open Stripe dashboard on your Payments page. That’s your Stripe Express dashboard — balance, payout schedule and history, per-payment fees, customer receipts, and any disputes/chargebacks all live there. Payout timing follows Stripe’s standard schedule for your country (typically daily or weekly after a short initial holding period for new accounts).
Disconnecting
Disconnect on the Payments page detaches your Stripe account from the platform: new sales fall back to the platform account immediately. Your Stripe account itself is untouched — your balance, payouts and history stay yours, and past sales can still be refunded normally. You can reconnect later; you’ll get a fresh onboarding to link an account again.
Troubleshooting
- “Payments are not configured on this platform yet” — the platform hasn’t switched payments on globally. Contact the platform team.
- A message starting with “Stripe error:” — that’s Stripe’s own explanation of what it needs; it usually says exactly what to fix. If it mentions the platform profile or Express not being enabled, that’s a platform-side setting — pass the message on to the platform team.
- Charges still disabled after onboarding — Stripe likely needs one more thing (often ID verification). Press Finish onboarding to jump back into Stripe’s flow; it opens on the missing step. Then Refresh status.
- Payouts disabled while charges work — your bank account isn’t verified yet. Sales still succeed and accrue in your Stripe balance; finish the bank step in the Express dashboard.
- Buttons ask for a passkey — connecting and disconnecting are protected actions. If you’ve registered a passkey, you’ll be asked to confirm with it — that’s expected.