Debiting Express and Custom accounts
At times, your platform may need to collect funds from your connected accounts:
- To charge the connected account directly for products or services
- To recover funds for a previous refund
- To make other adjustments to connected account balances (for example, to correct an error)
When using Express or Custom accounts, you can debit a connected account’s Stripe balance to credit to your platform account’s Stripe balance.
This creates a Transfer
on the connected account and a Payment
on the platform account.
Using Account Debits require getting legally binding consent from your connected accounts. This feature is available in Australia, Canada, Europe, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, and the US Stripe supports Account Debits only when both your platform and the connected account are in the same region (for example, both in Japan). If you have interest in other regions, contact the sales team. There’s an additional cost for using Account Debits.
Requirements
This functionality is only supported for Express and Custom. Additionally:
- The connected account and the platform must be in the same region (that is, both must be in Europe or in the US).
- The
currency
value must match the default currency of the connected account. - Debiting an account cannot make the connected account balance become negative unless you have reserves enabled (on by default for all new platforms created after January 31st, 2017) and have a bank account in the same currency as the debit.
- If a connected account balance becomes negative, Stripe may auto debit the external account on file, depending on what country the connected account is in.
To allow for the most seamless experience, verify the connected account’s bank before using Account Debits.
Charging a connected account
The create a charge API call supports providing a connected account ID as the source
value:
The API call returns the Payment
created on the platform account (note: it does not return a Charge
).
This approach is appropriate for platforms that charge their connected accounts for goods and services (that is, for using the platform). For example, a platform can charge its connected accounts for additional fees or services through their Stripe balance, minimizing any need to collect an additional payment method and allowing for nearly instant availability of the funds.