Payments and deposits at the point of booking
Short version: Bookafy takes payments and deposits through your own Stripe account. Money goes from the customer to you. Bookafy takes no cut and never touches the funds — you pay Stripe’s normal processing fee and nothing else on top.
A lot of booking platforms in beauty, wellness and services run payments on their payment rails, at their rate, and some take a commission on new clients as well. That is a real cost that never shows up on the pricing page. Bookafy does not do that. You connect the Stripe account you already have, and Stripe pays you out exactly as it does everywhere else.
Pricing is set per service, so a $40 consult and a $250 treatment can live side by side and each collect the right amount.
It is an OAuth connection from the Bookafy dashboard — you sign in to Stripe and approve access. No API keys to copy, and Bookafy never stores card numbers; the card is entered on Stripe’s side. Bookafy is PCI DSS and SOC 2 Type II, and there is a HIPAA-compliant configuration for medical practices.
Stripe’s own fees apply and are set by Stripe, not by us — check stripe.com for the current rate in your country.
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| Customer picks a slot | Bookafy checks your synced calendar so the slot is genuinely free |
| Customer pays | Card handled by Stripe, funds go to your Stripe account |
| Booking confirms | Confirmation email, calendar event on your Google/Outlook/Exchange/iCloud calendar, video link if the service uses one |
| Before the appointment | Email and SMS reminders — included, not metered |
| Payout | Stripe pays you on your normal Stripe schedule. Bookafy is not in the loop. |
Bookafy also supports Authorize.net. Those are the two card processors we take payment through at the point of booking. If you use something else, you can still take the booking through Bookafy and invoice separately — you just will not get the deposit-at-booking behaviour, which is usually the whole point.
Bookafy is a published Zapier app. Triggers available today: New Appointment, New Customer, New Appointment Type, New User. Actions: Create Appointment, Create Customer. So “new paid booking creates the customer in QuickBooks and posts to Slack” is a straightforward Zap.
Two limits to design around: Zapier polls Bookafy — on the free Zapier plan, every 15 minutes, so it is not real time — and there is no cancellation or refund trigger. For real-time flows, use Bookafy’s webhooks and open API. And note that a refund is done in Stripe, not in Bookafy.
No. Payments run through your own Stripe account. You pay Stripe’s processing fee; Bookafy takes nothing.
Yes, and you can set it per service — full payment for some, a deposit for others, free for a discovery call.
In Stripe. The funds sit in your Stripe account, so that is where you refund them.
Yes — Authorize.net.
Bookafy also connects to 3,000+ apps through Zapier and Make, and offers an open API and webhooks for anything custom.
If you’re weighing up appointment scheduling software, these go deeper:
