This document outlines the initial steps to take to get onboard with Stripe as your payment provider.
Before reaching out to integrate, we ask that you create a Stripe account and follow these simple steps:
Account Creation
- First you must create an account with Stripe. Use the following link to sign-up: https://dashboard.stripe.com/register
- Fill in all the required information about your business, including bank account information for payouts. You must set up two-factor authentication for your account.
- Complete your Platform profile, including the branding elements of your company: https://dashboard.stripe.com/settings/branding
- Next, configure your Payouts settings to control the schedule of how often the funds are paid out to your bank account: https://dashboard.stripe.com/settings/payouts
If there are any outstanding requirements for your account, you will be notified by a red banner at the top of your Dashboard. In most cases the approval process is nearly instantaneous, however, in certain cases, Stripe may require 3-5 business days to review the account. If they require more information on behalf of your account, Stripe will reach out directly to you.
Additional Resources
You may find these links useful to learn more about Stripe and how the platform works:
- Disputes & Fraud - https://docs.stripe.com/disputes
- Refunds and Cancelling Payments - https://docs.stripe.com/refunds#tracing-refunds
- Stripe Reporting - https://stripe.com/docs/stripe-reports
-
How PaymentIntents work - https://docs.stripe.com/payments/paymentintents/lifecycle
- You will see your transaction process through these stages so it can be beneficial to know.
Integration
When you are ready to onboard with Autocab, please email platform.delivery@autocab.com and request the Stripe integration. Also, let us know if you want Google and/or Apple Pay enabled. This will initiate the integration process, which includes the following steps:
- A team member will respond to your email with a one-time link. You need to click on that link to complete the connection with the Autocab platform.
- Once you have completed the connection, we will update your Passenger Apps to version 34.6 or higher. If you have requested Apple and/or Google Pay, we will also configure them during this stage.
- Our Platform Delivery team will contact you to agree on a time to enable Stripe.
- After enabling Stripe, we will configure it in AppSettings, which takes about two minutes to take effect. Please note that after a couple of minutes, customers may need to close and reopen the app to see the changes.
Note: We advise that you wait at least one week to enable Stripe to allow users to update their payment details, otherwise payments will fail. You also need to update your passenger app to version 34.6 or above to complete the configuration, as passengers on version 34.5 or below will not be able to complete card payments with Stripe.
We also recommend that you send out push notifications reminding customers to update their payment details.
Configuring Deferred Payments, Incremental Authorisation & Partial Collection
With Stripe, you have the option to use deferred payments. This means that after a journey is finished, the final payment amount is taken from a pre-authorised amount on the customer's payment method that was captured at the time of booking.
By default, deferred payments reserve a higher amount for pre-authorisations. However, you have the ability to use incremental authorisation, which allows for the authorised amount to be increased if the expected journey fare goes up.
Therefore, you may want to change your pre-authorisation rules from capturing a higher pre-authorised amount to reserving only the estimated fare. You can configure this in the Preauths tab in the Passenger App section of AppSettings
You may also need to change the Deferred Warning Text message that is sent to customers for deferred payments as it may currently be advising that you will be pre-authorising a higher amount.
Furthermore, you also need to enable Partial Collection, which allows the system to take the pre-authorisation amount if the fare goes over but the passenger does not have the funds in their account to cover the increase. This setting changes it so that the pre-auth amount is collected, and both the driver and passenger receive a notification stating the amount collected and the amount left to collect in the taxi.
To enable this setting, please contact Platform Delivery (platform.delivery@autocab.com) and we will configure this for you.
Finally, to reconcile these partial payments, log into the Stripe dashboard go to Payments, click the Export button and select a date range and then export.