Fees on Online Bookings — What You Pay, and When

When a family books and pays your camp through World Camps Checkout, two fees apply to that payment: the World Camps service fee and Stripe's payment-processing fee. This article explains both, where you see them, what a cancellation does to them, and when no fee applies at all.

Two ways to get paid — only one carries a service fee

World Camps Checkout. The family pays online when they book. Their card is authorised with the request and charged only after you accept, following your deposit settings and cancellation policy. Payments land in your own Stripe account. This is how every Marketplace Partner camp gets paid, and it's available to Pro and Premium camps too.

Your own way. Pro and Premium camps can also switch off online payment and collect the money themselves — bank transfer, your own payment link, or on arrival. You accept the request on World Camps, then settle payment in your own system; families see your payment instructions in-app. World Camps charges no service fee on bookings you collect yourself, and no Stripe fee runs through us either. You set this up once from your Business page, under How families pay you (the same Activate bookings screen your checklist points to). The full cycle is described in "Your own bookings and World Camps".

Everything below is about the first case: bookings paid through World Camps Checkout.

1. The World Camps service fee

The service fee is a percentage of the booking total and depends on the plan of the camp being booked:

Camp plan	Service fee on Checkout bookings
Marketplace Partner (free, no annual fee)	15%
Pro	9%
Premium	7%

A Free Listing camp cannot take bookings, so no fee applies.

Rates are exclusive of VAT. If your camp's legal seat is in Switzerland or Liechtenstein, 8.1% Swiss VAT is added on the fee itself (not on the booking) and retained the same way — on a CHF 150 fee that is CHF 12.15. Camps based in the EU or elsewhere pay no Swiss VAT on the fee (EU camps see the reverse-charge mention on their invoice).

How it's calculated. The percentage applies to the booking total the family actually pays — after discounts, including add-ons and any mandatory fees. It's taken from each payment as it's charged: the fee on the deposit when the deposit is charged, the fee on each balance instalment when that instalment is charged. Across the whole booking, it adds up to exactly the booking total × your rate.

Locked at acceptance. The rate, and the VAT treatment, are frozen the moment you accept a booking. If your camp changes plan later, bookings you already accepted keep the rate they were accepted at — up or down.

Deducted, never billed. The fee is retained automatically from each payment before it reaches your Stripe balance. You never have to pay it separately.

Example — CHF 1,000 booking, Marketplace Partner camp based in Switzerland, 20% deposit. The family pays CHF 1,000 in total. When the CHF 200 deposit is charged, CHF 30 plus CHF 2.43 VAT is retained; when the CHF 800 balance is charged, CHF 120 plus CHF 9.72 VAT is retained. Service fee in total: CHF 150, plus CHF 12.15 VAT. The rest, minus Stripe's fee, is yours. A camp based outside Switzerland retains only the CHF 150.

2. Stripe's payment-processing fee

Online payments are processed by Stripe, and the charge is made on your own Stripe account. Stripe's standard processing fee — typically between 1.5% and 3.5% of the payment plus a small fixed amount, depending on your Stripe account's country, the card type and the currency — is charged to you as the receiving account. This is the normal arrangement for taking card payments anywhere: the processor's fee belongs to the business receiving the money. World Camps adds nothing to it and receives none of it.

Your exact Stripe rates are on Stripe's pricing page for your country and on every payment in your Stripe dashboard.

The same example, continued. On CHF 1,000 with a Swiss Stripe account and a domestic card at 2.9% + CHF 0.30, Stripe's fee is about CHF 29.60 across the two payments. Net to you: roughly CHF 808. On Pro the service fee would be CHF 90 + CHF 7.29 VAT (net ≈ CHF 873); on Premium CHF 70 + CHF 5.67 VAT (net ≈ CHF 895).

Where you see all of this

• Your Stripe dashboard. Open any payment: the breakdown shows the amount charged, the World Camps service fee (labelled as an application fee), Stripe's processing fee, and your net. Because your Stripe account is your own, you see every transaction, in full, with no intermediary.
• Business → Payouts in your World Camps dashboard. Each booking's payout breakdown shows the service fee at your camp's real rate — never a generic estimate.
• Your monthly commission invoice. For your accounting, World Camps issues one invoice per camp per month listing every accepted booking and the service fee on it, dated at acceptance. On Checkout bookings this invoice is already settled — the fee, and the VAT on it for Swiss camps, were deducted from your payouts — so there is never anything to pay. Swiss camps see the 8.1% VAT itemised with our VAT number; EU camps see the reverse-charge mention. A monthly settlement statement (gross → service fee → Stripe fee → net, with Stripe references) is downloadable next to it, under Business → Plan & billing → Commission invoices. Cancellations that returned the fee appear as credit notes.

What happens to the fees when a booking is cancelled

Before you've answered a request — nothing is charged, nothing is owed. Declining a request simply releases the hold on the family's card. No service fee, no Stripe fee.

If you cancel a booking you've already accepted. The family is refunded in full — deposit included — and World Camps returns its service fee to you along with it. Our fee never costs you money on a booking that didn't happen.

Stripe, however, does not return its processing fee on refunds. That is Stripe's standard policy, not ours, and it applies to every business taking card payments. On a cancelled CHF 1,000 booking, roughly CHF 30 stays with Stripe. It's a small amount, but it is unrecoverable — worth knowing before you cancel a confirmed booking. If a date or capacity problem can be solved by agreeing a change with the family instead, write to support and we'll help arrange it.

If the family cancels. Payments already charged are never refunded under a family's own cancellation — the deposit stays with you, and so does any balance instalment already charged, because World Camps only ever charges the part of the balance that has become non-refundable under your policy. Cancelling stops future instalments; it doesn't reverse past ones. So in the common case a family cancellation moves no money at all, and the service fee already retained stays retained.

Exceptional refunds. In rare cases — a dispute, an error, a situation our team reviews with you — World Camps can issue a refund on your behalf. Whether the service fee is returned is decided case by case and recorded with the refund.

Payouts

Captured payments land in your Stripe balance straight away, net of both fees, and Stripe pays your bank on the payout schedule you control in your own Stripe dashboard — daily, weekly or monthly. World Camps never holds your money and never schedules your payouts. When each payment is charged, and how that follows your cancellation policy, is explained in "How Payouts Work".

Questions

Write to support@world-camps.org, or open Business → Plan & billing in your dashboard to see the plan — and the rate — that applies to each of your camps.