One order.
Split across
the whole group.
Four friends want the £480 booking. None of them wants to front it and chase the other three. SharePay charges each of them their own share, on their own card, and settles the whole order at once.
Costs you nothing · Each person pays 20p to split · Paid into your own Stripe account
Order WKND-2231
£480.00
- AM Alex M. £120.00 Authorised
- SO Sam O. £120.00 Authorised
- JP Jo P. £120.00 Authorised
- RK Riya K. £120.00 Waiting
Nothing is captured until Riya authorises. No one has been charged yet.
Everyone's card is held.
Nobody's card is charged.
A split isn't a payment plan and it isn't credit. It's a set of ordinary card authorisations that all settle at the same moment, or all disappear.
-
Each share is held
Every participant authorises only their own amount, on their own card. Each one becomes a separate hold on your Stripe account: money reserved, not taken.
-
The group completes
The moment the last person authorises, SharePay captures every hold together. You see the whole order settle at once, not a trickle of partial payments to reconcile.
-
Or it all unwinds
One person declines, or the week runs out, and every hold is released, including from the people who already agreed. You never have to refund a half-collected order.
Your Stripe account
Charges are created directly on it. SharePay never holds your funds.
No escrow
No SharePay balance, no payout schedule of ours to wait on.
Liability unchanged
Disputes stay between you and the cardholder, as on any Stripe payment.
per split
SharePay costs you nothing. Each person pays a flat 20p service fee when they split, on top of their share. You receive the full order value, less only your normal Stripe fees.
No setup fee. No monthly fee. No percentage. Nothing to pay on an order that never completes, and nothing deducted from the one that does. Your customers see the 20p on their pay page, itemised, before they authorise anything.
You still pay your normal Stripe processing fees, billed to you directly at your usual rate.
A £120 order, split 3 ways
- Each person's share
- £40.00
- SharePay service fee, on their card
- £0.20
- So each of them is charged
- £40.20
- You receive
- £120.00
The full order value, less your own Stripe fees. SharePay deducts nothing from it.
Stripe's fees, honestly
A split is one card charge per person, so Stripe's fixed per-transaction fee applies 3 times here, not once. Its percentage applies to each charge, and each charge carries the customer's 20p, so it costs you around a third of a penny more per person than the bare share would. On small baskets split many ways, that fixed fee is the part worth doing the maths on.
It depends on whether you know who's paying.
Both routes need a Stripe account connected first. Onboarding is Stripe's own hosted flow and takes a few minutes.
You already know the group
Bookings, invoices, deposits: anywhere you have the names and you're agreeing the split yourself. No code at all.
- 1
Create the split in your dashboard: the order reference, then each person's email and the amount they owe. The form checks the shares add up to the total.
- 2
Send everyone their link. SharePay generates one pay link per participant. Each person sees only their own share.
- 3
Watch it complete. The dashboard shows who's authorised and who hasn't. You're paid when the last one does.
You'll need each participant's email address up front. This flow doesn't hand your customer a link to divide up themselves.
Your customer picks the group
Splitting as a checkout option on your own storefront. Your buyer invites the others and sets the amounts. Needs a developer.
/api/merchants/checkout/sessions x-merchant-api-key: sp_sk_…
{
"amount": 480.00,
"order_reference": "WKND-2231",
"return_url": "https://yourshop.co.uk/thanks"
}- 1
Call the endpoint with your API key when the buyer chooses to split. You get back a
checkout_url. - 2
Redirect the buyer there. SharePay hosts the page where they invite people and set the amounts, then sends them back to your
return_url. - 3
Listen for the webhook. Signed with HMAC-SHA256 against your webhook secret, so you can fulfil the order the moment the split is paid.
Set an allowed domain in Settings first. Your return and cancel URLs must be HTTPS and match it exactly.
The limits, up front.
- UK and GBP only
- SharePay opens Stripe Standard accounts in Great Britain, and splits settle in pounds. Other countries and currencies aren't supported yet.
- About a week to complete
- Card holds expire after roughly seven days. SharePay cancels at six, so holds are released cleanly rather than lapsing.
- Disputes stay with you
- Charges are created directly on your account, so chargeback liability is unchanged. We don't take it on, and we don't shift it.
- Refunds are pro-rata
- Each share is its own charge, so refunding a completed split returns each person their own money automatically, service fee included.
Try it before you connect a real business
Run the whole flow on our demo environment with Stripe test cards. No verification, no real money.
Questions merchants actually ask
Something not covered here? Email sales@share-pay.co.uk and a person will reply.
Do I need to write any code?
Not if you already know who's paying. You can create a split from the SharePay dashboard by entering each person's email and their share, and SharePay sends everyone their own pay link. To offer splitting to customers on your own storefront, you do need a developer: that route is a REST API and a redirect.
What does it actually cost?
SharePay costs you nothing. Each person pays a flat 20p service fee when they split, on top of their share, and it's shown to them before they authorise. You receive the full order value, less only your normal Stripe fees, which Stripe charges you directly. There's no setup fee, no monthly fee and no percentage. Worth knowing: a split is one card charge per person, so Stripe's fixed per-transaction fee applies once per participant rather than once per order, and its percentage applies to each charge including that 20p.
What do my customers pay?
Their share, plus a flat 20p SharePay service fee. Their pay page shows three lines before they authorise anything: their share, the 20p, and the total charged to their card, and the button quotes that total, so nobody meets the fee afterwards. Each share has to be at least £1. If a completed split is refunded through SharePay, the 20p goes back to them as well.
When do I get paid, and how much?
The whole order is captured at once, when the last participant authorises their share. Until then every share is an uncaptured hold and no money has moved. What reaches your account is the full order total, less only Stripe's own processing fees, the same as any other Stripe payment. SharePay takes nothing out of it: our 20p is charged to each customer on top of their share. If someone declines, or the group runs out of time, every hold is released and nobody is charged, including the people who already said yes.
How long do customers have to pay?
About a week. Card holds expire after roughly seven days, so SharePay cancels a split at six days to release the holds cleanly before the card network does it for us.
Where does the money go?
Straight into your own Stripe account. Each share is a separate charge created directly on your connected account, so SharePay never holds, touches, or routes your funds. There's no escrow and no chargeback liability shift. Disputes stay between you and the cardholder, exactly as they would on any other Stripe payment.
What if Stripe rejects my application?
Contact SharePay support and we'll help you work through it. Stripe verification is between you and Stripe. We can't approve an account on your behalf, but we've seen most of the common rejection reasons before.
Who can use this?
UK businesses taking payment in pounds. SharePay opens Stripe Standard accounts in Great Britain and splits settle in GBP only, so other countries and currencies aren't supported yet.
Stop losing the orders nobody wants to front
Let the group split it, and settle the whole order at once.