---
title: Getting paid
description: Where the money goes, what it costs, and how refunds and chargebacks work.
---

Short version: tips land in your own Stripe or PayPal account, TipPage takes nothing, and we never hold your funds.

## Fees

There is no platform fee. The full tip amount is transferred to you - the only cost is the payment processor's own processing fee (Stripe's card fee, or PayPal's receiving fee), exactly as if someone paid you directly. Viewers pay exactly the amount they enter; no fees are added on top.

## Payouts

- **Stripe** - tips settle into your connected Stripe account, and Stripe pays out to your bank on your Stripe payout schedule. You manage that schedule (and see your balance) in your own Stripe dashboard, not in TipPage.
- **PayPal** - tips arrive directly in your PayPal balance the moment they're captured. Withdrawals to your bank work like any other PayPal money.

## How a card tip is charged

Card tips are authorized first and captured second. When a viewer confirms a
tip, their bank places a hold on the money; TipPage then runs its checks -
your [ban list](/moderation/bans-and-refunds) included - and only captures
the payment once the tip is clean. A banned donor's hold is simply released:
they are never actually charged, and nothing reaches your queue.

PayPal doesn't support this hold-first flow - a banned donor's PayPal tip is
captured and then refunded, which viewers agree to when tipping. That's one
of several ways PayPal offers weaker protection than Stripe - the
[privacy page](/privacy) has the full comparison.

## Refunds

Every tip receipt (sent to viewers who enter an email on your tip page) includes a single-use refund code that's valid for 7 days. A viewer can use it to look up their tip and request a refund - those requests appear on your **Refunds** page in the dashboard, where you can review and process them.

Viewers agree when tipping that they can request a refund but aren't entitled to one - it's your call. If you refund a charge from your Stripe dashboard, the matching request is marked processed automatically.

:::note
No receipt email means no refund code - viewers who skip the email field can't request a refund later.
:::

## Chargebacks

Tips are real card payments, so a viewer can dispute one with their bank. Stripe passes the disputed amount plus a dispute fee on to the platform. Disputes on your tips are tracked, and if you're on [TipPage+](/tippage-plus), the dispute fee is covered - it comes out of our pocket, not yours.

The authorize-then-capture screening above also keeps chargebacks rare in the first place: the tips most likely to be disputed - banned donors, known bad actors - never get captured at all.