Taking payments with Soclo Pay

Soclo Pay gives your website a checkout and gives you payment links to send. You set it up once, in your own name, and customer money goes straight to your own Stripe account. Adding a Pay button to a page after that is two fields and a click.

How do I set it up?

Payments is in the sidebar of the web app at app.soclo.app, and inside the Soclo app on your phone, so you can do this from either. Open Payments. The page is headed Set up online payments and tells you plainly where the money goes: customer money goes straight to your own Stripe account.

It also lists what to have ready, under the heading Have these to hand — it takes about 10 minutes:

• Your business bank account — sort code and account number
• Photo ID — passport or driving licence
• Your company number, if you have one

Click Set up payments and work through the checks. When they are done the page reads Ready to take payments. Until then it tells you which of Stripe needs more information, Stripe is verifying your details or Finish your payment setup applies, so you are never guessing where you are in the queue.

How do I put a Pay button on my website?

In the website editor, click Add in the dock, then Pay.

First, the Button wording. Three choices, and the dialog explains what each one does:

• Pay now — cards on the secure checkout.
• Apple Pay — shows on iPhone and Safari when the checkout allows it.
• Google Pay — shows on Android and Chrome when the checkout allows it.

Cards never sit on your page. The button takes the visitor to the secure checkout.

Then New Pay button, which is two fields:

1. What is it for? — the thing the customer is buying. Name it the way they think of it: Haircut deposit, not Payment 4. This is what appears on their bank statement three weeks later.
2. Price (£) — a number between £1 and £10,000, like 12.50.

Click Add Pay button and it lands on the page, where you move and style it like anything else.

If you have already made payment links, they are listed under Your payment links so you can drop an existing one on the page instead. If you sell more than one thing, there is an option to add them all as Add to cart buttons, and a published site can check them out together.

And if you already use another checkout, open Use a checkout link you already have and paste an https:// Stripe, PayPal, SumUp or Soclo Payments link.

What if I do not have a website yet?

Use a payment link on its own. On the Payments page, New payment link takes the same two things — what it is for and the amount — and the page puts it well: send it in a message, put it on your page, print it as a QR code.

A link is the right tool whenever you can state a price before the customer commits:

• Deposits — the highest-value use for most service businesses, because it turns a verbal yes into a commitment and cuts no-shows.
• Booking or call-out fees, collected before you allocate the time.
• A defined service at a set price.
• Invoices you would otherwise chase. A link is easier to pay than a bank transfer, and easier to send again.
• In person, on the customer's own phone, which covers a lot of counter and doorstep situations while the in-store card machine is still coming.

It is the wrong tool when the price genuinely depends on choices the customer has to make. If you are making six links for six variations of the same thing, you have outgrown the format — put the products on your site instead.

Where does the money show up?

Two places, and check both the first time.

1. Your Stripe account, which is where the money actually is. Payouts and bank details are managed there, linked from the Payments page.
2. Orders & customers in the web app, which shows what they bought, who they are and the state of the payment.

Take one real payment of a small amount before you rely on it for real orders, and confirm it lands in both. A payment that succeeds at the card end while going unrecorded looks fine to the customer and wrong to you at month end.

What Soclo will never do on its own

Money decisions sit permanently outside automation. Bank details, prices, campaign budgets, refunds and payment settings always need your confirmation, however much routine work you have handed to Autopilot elsewhere. If something appears to be changing a payment setting without asking, treat it as wrong and check it.

Getting paid faster, without being unpleasant

Most late payment is friction rather than refusal. A customer who means to pay still has to find their card, open their banking app and type your details. A link removes almost all of that, so send it at the moment agreement happens rather than later that evening, and put it where the conversation already is instead of in an email they will not open.

For deposits, say plainly what it secures — a date, a slot, materials. People pay deposits readily when they can see what they hold, and hesitate when it sounds like a fee for existing.

Where to go next

The website editor covers building the page the button sits on. Orders & customers covers what to do once somebody pays. How credits work explains where credits do and do not come into it.