Getting paid to your own bank (Stripe & Paystack)

Online invoice payments need somewhere to land. The "Getting paid" card in Settings is where you connect your own payout account so that when a client pays an invoice online, the money goes to your bank, not the app's. Platybooks takes no cut of those payments; you only pay your payment processor's normal fees.

There are two ways to connect, and which one you see depends on how your workspace is set up. If your business uses Stripe, you connect through Stripe's own onboarding. If you collect in South African Rand through Paystack, you enter your South African bank details directly. The card automatically shows the right option for your workspace.

Important context: by default a workspace runs payments in a test (mock) mode, so the connect options are not switched on yet. While that's the case, the card simply tells you that live payouts aren't enabled and that connecting a real Stripe or Paystack account becomes available once live payments are turned on. Nothing you do in test mode moves real money.

Connecting a payout account is owner-only. Only the workspace owner sees the connect button or the bank-details form; admins and members see a read-only message and can ask the owner to finish the setup. This keeps control of where money lands with the person who owns the workspace.

Getting paid online is part of the online payment links feature, so it's gated by plan. It's included on the Starter, Pro, and Business plans and is not available on the Free plan. On Free, the "Getting paid" card shows an upgrade prompt instead of the connect options. If you don't see the connect flow at all, check both your role and your plan.

Stripe runs its own secure onboarding (identity checks, your bank details, and so on), so you finish setup on Stripe's website and come back when you're done. The app never sees or stores your raw bank details.

Paystack has no separate hosted onboarding screen. Instead you enter your South African bank account once, and the app sets up a payout account behind the scenes so Rand (ZAR) invoice payments are split straight to your bank. Your account details are handled securely on the server; only the bank and the last four digits of the account number are kept for display.

Collection becomes available only once onboarding is genuinely complete. For Stripe, that means your connected account is verified and able to accept charges; the card shows "Stripe connected" with a "Payouts enabled" (or "Payouts pending") badge. For Paystack, it's ready as soon as your bank account is connected. Readiness is confirmed on Stripe's side rather than just because you returned from the onboarding page, so if Stripe is still verifying, you'll see a "verifying your account" note until it's done. Until an account is ready, the public Pay button and payment links for your invoices won't take card payments.

Refunds go back to the customer through the same provider that took the payment. In an invoice's payments list, owners and admins get a "Refund" action next to a successful card payment. Confirming it returns the money to the payer via Stripe or Paystack (whichever processed it) and updates the invoice's paid amount and status. Stripe refunds are recorded straight away; Paystack refunds are queued and settle shortly. This is separate from manually recording an offline refund.