We're delighted to announce that we're introducing Stripe as an alternative Workspace payment platform, alongside PayPal.

Introducing Stripe means you can now activate a standard credit card form at checkout, and also get your payouts faster.

However the two platforms interact with Workspace quite differently, and it's important to understand how…

Stripe and PayPal are:

— How you pay for your wholesale purchases from Queensberry.
— How your clients pay for purchases in your retail shopping cart.
— How Workspace pays you the profits on those sales.

You'll find a lot of information about setting up your shopping cart in our Help Centre, including creating price lists, banking and tax arrangements, and how to set up PayPal and Stripe for Workspace.

This post is about the differences between the two platforms, and how they work with Workspace…

Who needs a PayPal or Stripe account?

If you're selling retail your customers don't need a PayPal or Stripe account. They can pay by credit card in the normal way using either platform.

If all you're doing is buying wholesale from Queensberry, you won't need an account either.

However you will need a PayPal and (optionally) a Stripe account to sell retail using the Workspace shopping cart system.

You can offer your customers a choice.

If you set up the necessary Stripe and PayPal accounts, you can deploy both platforms in your shopping cart. PayPal is mandatory, Stripe optional.

Both platforms hide credit card details from the merchant.

Both are trusted platforms designed to protect against fraud, money laundering etc, which is why you'll need to provide verified personal and business information before you can open a merchant account.

PayPal and Stripe operate differently with Workspace.

PayPal: Millions of people have personal PayPal accounts so they can make payments online without entering or disclosing their credit card details to vendors — either by using their PayPal funds or by authorising payment from a card they've linked to their account.

If you use PayPal to collect payment for your Workspace orders, customers without a PayPal account can pay by credit card in the normal way. Similarly, you can pay for your wholesale Queensberry purchases using PayPal without an account.

If you've already activated PayPal in Workspace and don't want to add Stripe, you don't need to do anything.

Stripe is a credit card processing platform. Stripe collects payments by credit card and pays them into the merchant's Stripe account, less credit card processing fees, just like PayPal. However Stripe doesn't offer personal accounts as PayPal does.

Stripe also enables Workspace to split payments received between you and Queensberry, which means we can deduct the wholesale cost of transactions and pay out your net sale proceeds faster. These deductions are confusingly called "application fees" in Stripe.

The Workspace/PayPal shopping cart workflow in brief

1. Your customer orders Queensberry products from your Workspace Shopping Cart.
2. Workspace receives the order and payment via PayPal.
3. Workspace sends confirmations to Queensberry, you and your client.
4. Queensberry fulfils the order and ships to your customer.
5. Workspace pays the profit on your orders (the sale value minus transaction fees and Queensberry's fulfilment charges) into your PayPal account monthly.
6. You transfer the profits from PayPal to your bank.

The Workspace/Stripe shopping cart workflow in brief

1. Your customer orders Queensberry products from your Workspace Shopping Cart.
2. You receive payment immediately into your own Stripe account of the total sale value minus credit card processing fees and Queensberry's fulfilment charges — called "application fees" by Stripe.
3. Workspace sends order confirmations to Queensberry, you and your client.
4. Queensberry fulfils the order and ships to your customer.
5. You can schedule automatic daily transfers of your profits to your bank from Stripe.

Find much more about Stripe and PayPal, and how to set them up in Workspace, in our Help Centre.

Please email us if you have questions. Enjoy!