Travelers pay you, not Samba. Every card payment goes through your own connected Stripe account. Samba schedules and records the payments, and charges you a commission separately.
Where the money goes
Card, Apple Pay and Google Pay payments are taken on your own Stripe account, not on Samba's.
Offline payments — cash, bank transfer, check — never touch Samba. You collect the money yourself and record it on the booking.
Refunds go back through the same Stripe account to the card that paid. See Refund a payment.
What Samba charges
Samba has no monthly fee. Your first $10,000 in lifetime bookings is commission-free; after that it takes a 2% commission on card payments collected through Samba. Payments you record as offline are never charged commission.
Commission is invoiced to the card you keep on file with Samba. It is not taken out of your travelers' payments. See Choosing a plan for how it is calculated and billed.
You decide who carries that 2%:
Setting | Traveler pays | You receive |
You cover the commission (default) | The trip price | The trip price, minus Samba's commission |
Pass to customer at checkout | The trip price plus a Service fee line | The trip price |
Only Samba's commission can be passed on. Stripe's processing fees stay your cost in both cases. See Samba's fees and passing them on.
Pay in full, or deposit and installments
By default a traveler pays 100% at booking. On a multi-day trip you can attach a payment plan: a deposit at booking, then installments charged automatically to the saved card on set dates before departure. Day tours are always paid in full.
See Set up a payment plan, and When an installment fails for what Samba does if a charge is declined.
A worked example
A traveler books a €1,000 trip. The trip uses the Deposit + balance plan: 30% at booking, 70% due 30 days before departure.
You cover the commission | Pass to customer | |
Trip price | €1,000 | €1,000 |
Service fee (2%) | — | €20 |
Traveler's total | €1,000 | €1,020 |
Deposit at booking (30%) | €300 | €306 |
Charged 30 days before departure (70%) | €700 | €714 |
Samba's 2% commission | €20, on €1,000 | €20, on €1,000 |
You keep, before Stripe's fees | €980 | €1,000 |
The Service fee is part of the traveler's total, so it is spread across the deposit and the installments like the rest of the price. Samba never charges commission on its own fee: in both columns commission is 2% of €1,000.
Where to see it all
On a booking — open the booking and expand Payments. You see the payment status, the upcoming installments, every transaction, and the booking's invoices.
Across your workspace — Operations → Transactions lists every payment and refund. See Find transactions, receipts and invoices.
In Stripe — each Stripe transaction in Samba links to the same payment in your Stripe Dashboard.