Charge for seats at your session

Any session you host can be free or paid. On a paid session, a player pays by card when they RSVP, through Stripe, and the money goes to your own connected payout account. You choose the price and the refund terms; Waypoint Realms keeps one fee, which the form shows before you publish.

Connect your payouts

On the Organize a session form, the Seat price field only appears once your payout account is ready. Until then the form says Want to charge for seats? Connect a payout account first. and offers a Connect payouts button.

1. Choose Connect payouts

   You land on Stripe's own page, where Stripe asks for the details it needs to pay you.

2. Finish Stripe's steps

   Stripe returns you to the form you came from when you are done.

3. Fill in the form again

   The price field is there once Stripe confirms your account can take payments and pay you out. That can take a moment after you return.

You connect once. The same payout account is used for venue bookings and store sales, so if you already connected payouts for either, the price field is already there.

Set the price

Seat price (optional) takes dollars and cents, such as 12.50, up to $10,000.00. Leave it blank for a free session. A card payment can't be smaller than $0.50, and the iPhone and Android apps won't accept less, so keep a paid seat at $0.50 or more. Players pay in US dollars.

See what you will receive

As soon as you type a price, a line appears under the field: You'll receive $22.50 after the 10% fee ($2.50), card processing included. (That is the line for a $25 seat at the standard fee.) The figure comes from the same rate the checkout uses, so the preview and the payment can't disagree.

• The standard fee for a paid seat is 10% of the seat price. Card processing is included in it; there is no second deduction.
• Players pay the price you set and nothing on top: the session page says No booking fee.
• The fee on each seat is fixed when that player pays. A fee only goes up with at least 90 days' notice. The current rates are on Fees.
• Approved Game Masters are on a different schedule, and the preview shows theirs. See Become a Game Master.

Set the refund terms

Once a price is set, Attendance & policy (closed by default) gains two refund fields:

• Refunds allowed until — Any time before it starts (the default), 24 hours before, 48 hours before or 1 week before.
• Anything else about refunds — optional, up to 500 characters, in your own words.

Players see both before they pay, and the cutoff is enforced when they cancel. Cancelling before it returns the seat price and takes it back from your payout, and the platform fee on that seat is returned too. After it, the seat is released and the player is told it wasn't refunded. You can change the terms later under Host settings → Joining on the session page.

What changes on a paid session

• Guests are off. A player books their own seat; the guest choice is greyed out with “Guests aren't available on paid seats yet.”
• A paid seat can't be turned into a Maybe. A player who can't come cancels instead, and your refund terms apply.
• Approval still works. With Approve each player before their seat is confirmed on, a player asks first, nobody is charged and no seat is held until you say yes, and then they pay to claim it.
• The waitlist is free to join. When a paid seat opens up, the next person is told and can buy it; nobody is charged without choosing to pay.
• A seat is held for a player while they check out, and released if they haven't paid within 30 minutes.

When someone pays

You get a Seat sold notification, in the app and by email unless you have changed that in your notification settings. The player appears on the session's Attendees door list like any other. Stripe pays you out on its own schedule, so the money reaches your bank when Stripe sends it.

A seat is charged only while your payout account is ready. If Stripe pauses your payouts, usually because it needs something verified, you get a Your payouts are paused notification, and new seats can't be paid until it is sorted.