Stripe

We use a service called Stripe to take credit card payments on LibriDirect sites. The main benefit of using Stripe is that we can take credit card details directly as part of the checkout process rather than sending the customer to a third party site such as PayPal. In fact, your customers will probably never know that you're using Stripe to process payments - it fits seamlessly into your website. This will increase the chances of a customer completing your checkout process as they don't have to remember another set of login details.

In order to start taking payments you'll need to set up a Stripe account. This is a simple process and we'll guide you through it as part of the signup process. You don't need a merchant bank account to use Stripe. However, the money you receive via Stripe will take a few days to reach your bank account. The delay will be reduced as your account becomes more established.

Stripe charges a fee for each payment processed. We also add on a small fee to cover some of our costs. The fees vary by location, but the total fees are:

• For European sellers: 1.9% + £0.20/€0.25 for Eurpean cards and 3.4% + £0.20/€0.25 for non-European cards.
• For US sellers: 3.4% + $0.30 for all cards.

These fees are only charged on successful payments and are refunded if you refund a customer.

Stripe has a full featured dashboard that you can use to dig into the detail of everything that's going on, but for day-to-day use you should be able to do everything you need to via the admin area of your website.