Payments outside Stripe

Not every client wants to hand you a card. Some send an e-transfer the night before, some pay cash on the day, some ask for your Venmo. Maelo lets you keep taking that money and still keep one tidy record of the booking.

The important distinction: Maelo records these payments, it does not process them. The money goes straight from your client to your Venmo, your bank or your pocket. Maelo never touches it, takes nothing from it, and cannot see whether it arrived. You tell Maelo it landed, and Maelo updates the booking and receipts your client.

Card payments work the other way round, and they are covered in How money moves through Maelo.

Go to Settings, Payments, Final Payments. The methods are grouped by region, so you only expand the ones you actually use.

• •Universal: Cash.
• •US Payment Methods: Venmo, Zelle and Cash App.
• •Canada: Interac e-Transfer.
• •International: Wise, Revolut, UK Bank Transfer and Bizum (Spain).

Turn a method on and it asks for the detail your client needs: a username for Venmo, an email for Zelle, a cashtag for Cash App, a phone number for Bizum, account name plus sort code and account number for UK Bank Transfer. Wise and Revolut take a username and an optional payment link. Cash needs nothing at all.

Interac e-Transfer has a little more to it. Add your email and recipient name, then leave Auto-deposit on if your bank has it. Switch it off and you can set the security question and answer your client will need.

Open the booking and choose Collect Payment. Under Payment Options you get a row for every method you enabled, with the amount already worked out.

Expand a row and it lays out exactly what your client needs to send and where. Every field is a copy button, so you can paste your cashtag or sort code into a message rather than reading it out. Cash App and Venmo also show a QR code your client can scan from your screen, and tapping it makes it full size.

1. 1

   Check the money actually arrived

   Look at your banking or payment app, not at Maelo. Maelo has no way of knowing whether a transfer landed.

2. 2

   Tap Mark as Paid

   It sits at the bottom of the payment options, under Cash, check, or other method.

3. 3

   Pick how it was paid

   Cash, Venmo, Zelle, Cash App, Interac e-Transfer, Wise, Revolut, Bank Transfer, Bizum or Other. There is an optional Tip field, which is only ever used for your own analytics.

4. 4

   Confirm Payment

   The booking is marked paid, and Maelo emails your client a receipt for the amount. Stripe cannot send one for cash or an e-transfer, so Maelo does it instead.

Payments outside Stripe cost you nothing. Maelo takes no fee on them, and neither does Stripe. That is the upside, and it is a real one.

The trade is protection and record keeping. These payments never appear in your Stripe payouts or in the Payments list under Financial, because Stripe never saw them. There is no card on file to charge if your client changes their mind, no automatic reminder chasing an unpaid balance, and no way to reverse a payment through Maelo if something goes wrong.

Deposits are the place to be careful. A deposit is the thing holding your date, so taking it by card through Maelo is usually worth the fee. See Deposits for how that works, and Fees and pricing for what a card deposit actually costs you.