Connecting Stripe to get paid for workshops: how it works and what you need

Out of every twenty completed profiles, a sizeable share have never connected a payout account. The result is a good-looking page, with the right photos, that nobody can book. Until the account is connected the workshop cannot be published, and that is deliberate: better a profile still in preparation than a customer who pays with no clarity on where the money went.

What Stripe does, plainly

Stripe is the infrastructure that lets anyone accept card payments without a card terminal and a bank contract. It is the same service used by thousands of online shops in Italy. Here it does one thing: take the customer's deposit at booking and pay it into your account.

The money does not pass through us

This is the distinction worth understanding, because it is also why we take no commission. The customer's payment is collected directly by your account: it does not sit in a common pot we later pass on to you. You see the transaction in your own dashboard. The transfer to the bank is not automatic: the deposit stays in your account's Stripe balance and leaves for your IBAN 5 days after the workshop takes place. Those five days are there to cover any refunds and disputes.

• We hold none of your money waiting to be transferred.
• No platform commission on workshop takings. Stripe's own per-transaction fees remain, as they do for anyone accepting cards; they are on Stripe's published price list.
• The balance stays yours to handle: the model is deposit online, balance on site, so you collect the larger part in person as you always have.

What you are asked for

1. Your tax status: individual with a VAT number, company, or individual without one. It must match what you declared on your profile.
2. A valid ID document, photographed front and back, for the anti-money-laundering check required by European rules. It is not a platform request and cannot be skipped.
3. The IBAN of the account you want to be paid into. It must be in your name or your business's: an account belonging to a family member will be refused.
4. An address and a phone number, for later checks.

How long it takes

Filling it in takes about ten minutes. Verification is automatic in most cases; sometimes an extra document is requested and it takes longer. Meanwhile you can draft your workshop: when verification clears, you publish.

Why it gets stuck

• Details that do not match: a different name on the document, or a VAT number with a stray space.
• An IBAN in someone else's name. Common with family accounts: it will not pass.
• An unreadable, expired or cropped ID photo.
• A process started and never finished. By far the most frequent case: you open it, you reach the document request, you put it off. Then you forget you left it halfway.

If you stopped halfway you do not have to start over: the process picks up where you left it. And if something does not add up, the quickest route is to write to us — it is often a single field.