How & when you get paid
When you set up your Gift Up! account, we ask you to connect at least one supported payment method to Gift Up! so you can accept payments from your customers online.
This can be either an online payment method, like PayPal, Square or Stripe (we support more online payment gateways than this), or an offline payment method, like direct bank transfer, payment by phone etc...
If you elect to attach an online payment method (like PayPal for instance), as soon as you sell a gift card you'll get paid 100% of the revenue immediately straight into your connected payment method's account, which will ultimately make its way to your bank account according to your payment methods payout schedule. Your payment provider will also take their fee before paying you out to your bank account.
In other words, we do not hold or handle the funds when a gift card is purchased, it is handled directly between your attached payment gateway (for example your PayPal account, if you choose that), and the customer purchasing the gift card. This means that we cannot pay you out for the gift cards you've sold as we never use Gift Up's payment gateway to handle your gift card sales.
Common questions:
Where is my money?
When someone buys a gift card from you, it's direct transaction between the purchaser and you. You got paid directly into your payment processor's account balance. When you look at a gift card order in your dashboard, we actually store the payment reference from your payment processor and show it to you, with a link to the transaction.
Here's an example of an order paid using your Stripe account:
Most payment gateways we support have automatic payouts from your balance directly into the bank account you specified when setting up your account with them initially. The exception to this is PayPal who do not automatically pay out to your bank account, and you have to manually withdraw your money to your bank account 🙄.
Can't Gift Up! just pay directly into my bank account?
No, we cannot. That would mean that we would have to offer our credit card processing facilities to your gift card purchasers, something we are forbidden to do by our processors. Even if that were not the case, we would be the 'merchant on record' for that transaction, meaning we would bear those costs and the associated risk on the transaction, something we do not incorporate into our pricing. If we did, our prices would be much higher, as you'd imagine.
However, if you want to offer out a simple bank transfer as a payment option, where your customers pay you directly from their bank account into yours, you can do so free of charge by attaching your bank details as an offline payment method.
I use a different payment processor, can I just use that instead?
Maybe. We have a policy where we offer out some low cost, easy access, good experience payment providers as standard. But of course, there are literally hundreds of payment providers out there that it's unfeasible to support a meaningful amount of them. However, we do recognize that payment processing is an area that we can expand on and are doing so. Feel free to tell us who your provider is, the more we hear their name, the more it gets bumped up our list to get integrated next.
How does Gift Up! gets paid?
When you sell a gift card, we'll add our 3.49% fee (subject to a $0.50 minimum fee) to an invoice that we'll issue to you at your next monthly billing cycle. If you don't sell any gift cards that month, there'll be no charges from us at all.
Does the Gift Up! fee cover payment processing fees?
No, it does not. Our fee is on top of any fee that your payment processor charges you. However, in most cases, this is generally irrelevant as you only pay payment processing fees once, either on your gift card sale or when they come in and buy the product/service directly from you without a gift card. You never pay it twice in reality.
If you wish to pass on our fee to your customers, you can opt to do so.
When does the money get paid into my bank account?
PayPal
With PayPal, your funds can be removed automatically overnight into your bank account, using PayPal's "sweep" system or you can remove the funds manually at any time.
Read more about Getting paid on PayPal's website
Stripe
With Stripe, your funds will be immediately added to your Stripe balance and then sent to your bank account on a daily, weekly or monthly basis depending on how frequently you would like to get paid. This is available in your account payout settings.
Read more about Stripe Payouts on Stripe's website
Square
With Square, your funds will be in your bank account within 2 days of the gift card sale.