Payment collection

Maintain payment collection method and related settings.

Payment collection

Your payment collection method determines the way you collect payments for subscriptions, single session purchases and shop items from your members. Sessy has two options available, each described in more detail below.

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Make sure you choose your payment method and complete the setup before accepting members. Switching between payment methods with active member subscriptions is possible but it is better to avoid it, since it can take some effort and has some impact on your members.

1. Stripe

Use a connected Stripe account to collect member payments. Stripe is a payment processing platform that collects all the required information and the payments from your members. Then Stripe pays out the received funds to your account. Stripe enables you to offer multiple payment options to your customers (including credit card and SEPA direct debits). When you select Stripe as the payment collection method, you will be re-directed to the Stripe website to create Stripe account that is connected with your Sessy backend account. For more information about Stripe functionality and pricing: Go to Stripe →

Set up Stripe account

To set up Sessy for Stripe:

Go to the Settings page
Click on the “Pencil” icon next to the “Payment collection method” option to open the payment method dialog
In the dropdown list at the top select “Stripe”
Read the instructions (or the information below) carefully
Click on “Connect Stripe account”
You will be redirected to Stripe. Follow the instructions to sign in to an existing Stripe account or set up a new account. After that, complete the requested details about your business

After these steps, check on the “Settings” page. The payment collection method should now show status “Active”. If the setup shows as incomplete, go to your Stripe dashboard to check for the open actions (click on the “Pencil” icon to open the payment dialog and then click on “Go to Stripe account”).

There are some additional settings to complete when setting up your Stripe account:

Customer portal: Stripe’s customer portal gives customers the ability to manage their own payment information. The customer portal must be activated by confirming/ saving the customer portal settings. Go to Stripe Client Portal Settings →. Check your desired settings for the customer portal and click on “Save changes”. The customer portal is then activated. Note: The settings under the heading “Subscriptions” must remain disabled. Members can change subscriptions through the app and may not cancel or change their subscription through the customer portal, as this will not be processed in Sessy correctly.
Payment methods: Choose which payment methods you want to enable for your customers. Go to the “Payment methods” under the settings page in Stripe to view the list. Please contact us if you want to use a payment method that is blocked. Go to Stripe payment methods →.
Branding: Customize how the Stripe pages and documents to align the look and feel with your branding and colour scheme. Go to Stripe branding settings →.

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Members should not be able to change or cancel their subscription from the Stripe Customer Portal. Make sure to disable this setting under the Customer Portal settings in your Stripe account!

Consumable payment settings

When you enable “consumables in subscription”, a second subscription item will be added to each subscribing customer. The monthly price of this subscription item will be based on actual ‘metered usage’ of specific products/ services you offer to your client. This could be anything ranging from coffee, energy bars, but also merchandise such as t-shirts (everything defined under “Shop items (products/ services)” on the Settings page). By enabling this setting, members will not have to pay for every single item purchased. Instead, these items will be added to the monthly payment of their subscription. The consumables description is visible to your members when they subscribe, make sure the name provides a clear and concise name that your members will understand. Note: Enabling this setting will only change for new members, existing subscriptions will not be changed.

Maintain Stripe account

To maintain your Stripe settings: Go to Stripe dashboard →.

Some items are maintained from within Sessy and updated in Stripe through our integration. These items should not be changed in Stripe manually. Specifically:

Products: Subscription types in Sessy are automatically synched in Stripe and are called “Products”. Don’t add/ change/ delete products in Stripe directly if you want to use these within Sessy. These actions should be executed from within Sessy
Customers: Customers in Stripe are created when a member subscribes for the first time. Don’t create customers manually if you want to want the customer to work with Sessy.
Subscriptions: Subscriptions are added to a Stripe Customer (based on a Stripe “Product”) automatically when a member subscribes. When a member changes their subscription in Sessy, it is automatically updated in Stripe. Don’t add/ change subscriptions manually in Stripe.
Metadata: Metadata is created by Sessy on various objects in Stripe (e.g. Subscriptions and Products). The metadata is created to ensure Stripe and Sessy can ’talk’ to each other. Don’t change the metadata in Stripe.

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Don't change products, customers, subscriptions and metadata in Stripe directly.

2. SEPA direct debit export

Use your business’ bank account to collect member payments through SEPA direct debits. Admin users can create a payment batch in PAIN.008 format that can be imported in the online banking environment for processing (PAIN.008 is the standard format for SEPA direct debit payment files). The resulting processing statement from the bank can then be imported again to keep payment status up to date in Sessy. The Sessy app will collect the required IBAN account information from your members, but you are responsible for collecting the required direct debit authorizations from your members and the approval from your bank to collect direct debits.

Set up SEPA export

By default the payment method is already on “SEPA direct debit export”. However, to start using this functionality it is necessary to complete some additional details:

Go to the Settings page
Click on the “Pencil” icon next to the “Payment collection method” option to open the payment method dialog
Populate the IBAN account number you will be using to collect the SEPA direct debits (click on “Pencil” icon and “Save” icon)
Populate the name on the IBAN account
Populate your KvK registration number

Also determine what cancellation and switch periods you want to use with your subscriptions.

Cancellation period: How long after the cancellation request should the subscription be cancelled?
Switch period: Should members be able to switch between subscriptions without delay (immediately) or should there be a period between the switch request and the moment the subscription actually changes?

After these steps, check on the “Settings” page. The payment collection method should now show status “Active”.

To start using the SEPA direct debit export functionality, read more about payments →

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Ensure you test the export functionality and upload a test payment into your bank environment before accepting customers.

Switch payment method

If you need to switch payment method when you have active members, please read the instructions completely before taking action. Execute the steps the way described below to minimize the impact on your members and reduce the risk of failed payments and/ or duplicate payments.

From Stripe to SEPA export

Switching from Stripe to SEPA Direct Debit export. Before changing the payment method it is critical to execute the following steps:

get approval from your bank to execute SEPA direct debits
collect bank account details and direct debit authorizations from all your members
prepare an import file with the bank details from your members (see member import under settings for template and instructions)

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Ensure that the subscription column is populated for every member. If left empty the member will have to manually subscribe again through the member app.

Once everything is prepared, the following steps need to be executed immediately after each other to avoid duplicate charges to your members. The steps:

cancel the active subscriptions in Stripe (select to end immediately)
switch the payment method to SEPA Direct Debit on this page
import the bank details (see member import under settings)
Fill in the required IBAN and kvk information to be able to create payment export files (see under general settings –> payment method members).

Once everything has been set up correctly, you can choose to disconnect/ close your Stripe account (or leave it open for other purposes, this is up to you).

From SEPA export to Stripe

Switching from SEPA Direct Debit export to Stripe: After changing the payment method to ‘Stripe’ and setting up a connected Stripe account, all payments for new members will run through Stripe immediately.

However, existing members subscriptions are not migrated automatically. After changing the payment method and setting up Stripe all existing members will have sign up for a subscription again, now through stripe. Members can do this by going to the settings page in app and selecting the desired subscription via “Subscription: Change/ purchase subscription”. The customer will then be redirected to the Stripe checkout page for transferring the subscription to Stripe.

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When switching to Stripe, existing members will need to subscribe again through the member app.

They can do this in the app settings (under change subscription) after you have completed the setup in Stripe. Note that existing members will still be able to use their existing subscription during the switch period. You will also still be able to create direct debit payment batches for the members that haven’t switched to Stripe yet. However, it is recommended to keep this period as short as possible (preferably less than 1-2 months).

When creating your Stripe account it is important to complete all steps as soon as possible after switching to Stripe, including email validation and identification. Check for any open items shown on the Stripe dashboard page after creating your account.

3. Offline payments

This third payment method allows you to collect payments from customers outside of the Sessy platform. You are completely free in choosing what method to use. When customers subscribe to your business using the member app on Android or iOS, they will not be presented with a form to provide their payment details. Instead, a task is created in the Sessy backend for an employee to confirm/ process the payment. After the employee confirms that this step has been completed Sessy will automatically assign the subscription to the member and the member can start signing up for sessions.

Payment collection