Accepting Online Payments with Stripe

Spatiko collects online payments through Stripe. Connect it once, and the day-to-day of getting paid — charging at booking, requesting payment on an order, checking what’s come in, issuing a refund — happens inside Spatiko, on the order itself. Stripe does the processing; you shouldn’t need to open its dashboard to run your week.

Connecting Stripe

You don’t need an existing Stripe account. Connect from your settings and Spatiko creates a Stripe account for your business, then hands you to Stripe’s secure onboarding form to verify your details and add the bank account your payouts should land in. It’s a one-time setup — not something you reauthorize before every shoot. Even if you already use Stripe elsewhere, the connection sets up its own dedicated account for your Spatiko business.

The account is fully yours. You get your own Stripe dashboard login, payments settle to your Stripe balance and pay out to your bank on Stripe’s schedule, and Stripe’s processing fees are paid by you to Stripe — Spatiko doesn’t add a per-transaction fee on top.

What Spatiko does with the connection is deliberately narrow: it creates the charge when a client pays for one of your orders, and it processes the refunds you issue — always on your own account. The money never routes through Spatiko.

The step-by-step flow lives with the rest of your connections. See connecting your tools for the walkthrough.

The connection survives plan changes

If you ever move to a plan without online payments, Spatiko stops new charges but leaves the Stripe connection intact — so refunds and in-flight invoices still resolve, and everything picks back up the moment online payments are part of your plan again. You won’t re-onboard or lose your payment history. Plan specifics live on the pricing page.

How clients pay

Clients pay through Spatiko. When it’s time to pay, they enter their card details right where they booked or where they’re picking up their media — you don’t hand them a third-party invoice or a payment link to a separate service. It stays inside the flow they’re already in, which is how it should feel.

One-tap wallets

Because checkout runs on Stripe, clients get more than a bare card field. The payment step leads with a one-tap express checkout row — Apple Pay, Google Pay, Link, and PayPal — so an agent can pay in a couple of seconds from their phone instead of hunting for a card. The card form itself also surfaces additional methods like Klarna where available.

Which options a client sees depends on their device and browser (Apple Pay shows in Safari, Google Pay in Chrome, and so on) and on the payment methods enabled on your connected Stripe account. If none apply, the form simply falls back to card entry — the wallets themselves need nothing extra from you.

Enabling more payment methods

Cards and the wallets work out of the box. Beyond those, you can switch on additional methods — Link, Klarna, Cash App Pay, Affirm, Afterpay, and country-specific bank methods like iDEAL or SEPA Direct Debit — from the Stripe panel in your Spatiko settings, without touching the Stripe dashboard. The panel only offers what Stripe supports in your account’s country, and it shows each method’s status; some methods ask Stripe for extra business details before going live, and the panel routes you through that too.

Tips at checkout

When a client pays for an existing shoot — from the delivery gallery or the client portal — the payment step opens with an optional tip prompt before the payment form. It shows the photographer’s name and offers a few preset amounts plus a custom field; the client can just as easily continue without tipping. Whatever they choose rides on the same charge — no second transaction. Tips don’t appear at the initial booking checkout, only when paying for a shoot that’s already on the books.

The prompt shows when tipping is enabled for your business — the toggle is in Settings → Payments, and it’s on by default — and the shoot has a photographer assigned. Tips pay out to that photographer; in a solo business, that’s you. See photographer payouts for how tips land in earnings, and recording manual payments for tips handed to you in cash.

What connecting Stripe unlocks

Once Stripe is connected, three things become possible:

• Payment at booking. Collect full payment when a client books. Each order form sets its own payment timing, so you decide whether a slot is confirmed on payment or invoiced later. See when clients pay.
• The pay-to-download gate. Let clients preview their gallery, then release full-resolution downloads once payment clears. See pay-to-download.
• Payment status on every order. Each order tracks where it stands — unpaid, awaiting payment, partial, paid, overdue, refunded, or partially refunded — so you always know who still owes you. See invoices and payment tracking.

For the bigger picture of how money moves through a shoot, see getting paid.

Running payments without leaving Spatiko

Most payments collect themselves — the client pays at the booking checkout, from the delivery gallery, or in the client portal, and the order updates on its own. For everything else, the order’s billing card is the control panel.

Requesting payment on an order

When a balance is due and you don’t want to wait for the client to find it, open the order and use Request Payment. Spatiko emails the client a breakdown — the line items, anything already paid, and the amount due — with a personal message if you add one and a secure link that takes them straight to online checkout. The same link is shown for you to copy, so you can text it or drop it into your own email thread instead.

Payment history and receipts

The billing card’s Payment history lists every payment on the order — online and manual — with the method and card’s last four digits, tips called out, and each payment’s status. Online payments carry a Stripe receipt link you can open or pass along, and each one also links to the raw charge in the Stripe dashboard on the rare occasion you want it.

Refunds

Full and partial refunds are issued right from the payment history — the money goes back to the client’s original payment method, and the order’s payment status, balance, and activity feed update on their own. Refunds never re-lock media a client already unlocked. The details, including refunding as part of a cancellation, are in refunding a client.

What still lives in the Stripe dashboard

A few things are Stripe’s job, and it’s worth knowing where they live:

• Payouts to your bank. Stripe pays your balance out on its own schedule. The payout timing, history, and bank settings live in your Stripe dashboard — Spatiko doesn’t manage or display payouts.
• Disputes and chargebacks. If a client disputes a charge, Spatiko flags it where you’ll see it — a warning on the order and a badge on the payment, tracked through open, won, or lost. But the response itself, with evidence, is submitted in the Stripe dashboard; the warning links you straight to the dispute.
• Stripe’s processing fees. Stripe deducts its fees before paying out and reports them in its dashboard. Spatiko shows what the client paid, not the fee breakdown.

That’s the honest split: money in and everything about your orders happens in Spatiko; money out to your bank and dispute paperwork happen in Stripe.

If you haven’t connected online payments

You don’t have to connect Stripe to take bookings. If online payments aren’t set up, bookings still go through — the client is simply asked to arrange payment with you directly.

For paid modes, the media stays locked until payment is settled, so you never have to leave the download gate wide open just because you couldn’t charge a card. You can connect Stripe later and start collecting online whenever you’re ready.