How to recoup Stripes $2 per month active fee from small transfer amounts to custom Connect accounts

I'm using separate charges and transfers with Stripe Connect accounts. So, if I create a transfer of $1.00 to a Connect account, Stripe is going to charge my platform(me) $2.00/month + % fees + $0.25/payout for that active account according to their Connect pricing page

Question - Is there any way to charge the Connect account or pass that $2.00/month active fee onto the Connect account, so my platform doesn't have to pay it? ex. Direct charge, negative balance, invoice, debit custom account, etc. Or is there a way to see the total pending balance that will be sent out to the Connect bank account and "take back" some of it before it gets delivered?

Concern and/or Challenge - When I issue a transfer, I won't have any problems recouping funds (my 5% fees, Stripe's Connect fees 0.25%) from my customers Connect accounts. I won't go into the math explicitly, unless you ask, but I will remove all fees from the transfer before it's sent, then check via "TransferGroup" to look and see if any transfers have been made to the Connect account for that pay period (1/month) and if no transfers have been created yet, I will deduct on another $0.25/payout to be withheld. BUT now I have to do something similar to collect/recoup the Stripe $2.00/month flat rate per active account and this is where my problem arrises. My transfers might all be for $1.00 each! Ex. $1.00x100. So I can't simply deduct $2.00 from a $1.00 transfer to collect this fee.

My idea - The transfers for Stripe are coming from a tipping mechanism I've implemented between students and instructors on my site/app. The students can tip $1,2,3,4,...N tips. I can do a check to see if any tips have been sent for the month and if it's the first tip, force a minimum tip amount of $3.00, for each additional tip a student wants to send, it will only be $1.00. So the first student to send a tip gets forced into a min. $3.00 tip.

Another idea - Check each transfer amount to see if it's >= $3.00, if true, I can take all fees including the $2.00 account fee and still be in the Net positive to transfer, but if this transfer group doesn't receive any $3.00+ transfers in a month, I would then track the amount owed/not collected ($2.00) and try and collect it next month. This might work but seems like a sub par solution. Maybe there's a better way?

Another idea - Allow the Connect account to go into a negative balance , if I had to take $2.00 + $0.25 + %fees out of the first $1.00 transfer. I don't know if this is a good idea or how it would work exactly.

Another idea - I was looking to see if Stripe has a way to look at the total pending balance that will be transferred out to the bank account before the end of the pay period and somehow deduct the $2.00 from the total? I see there is a way to debit accounts, but there are lots of restrictions so I don't think it will work for my scenario (lots of international accounts).

Another idea - Debit custom accounts seems reasonable but it has too many restrictions ex. doesn't work for international accounts.

Another idea - I was looking at Direct Charges where it looks like I can charge a Connect account, but looking at this code, it only creates a "Request". How does it get me the money? Is it automatically sent from the Connect account to me(platform)? What happens if I only transfer $1.00 to a Connect account for a payout, but then send a "Request" for $2.00, does the Connect account go into some negative balance?

var service = new PaymentIntentService();
var createOptions = new PaymentIntentCreateOptions
{
   PaymentMethodTypes = new List<string>
   {
      "card",
   },
   Amount = 2000,
   Currency = "usd",
};

var requestOptions = new RequestOptions();
requestOptions.StripeAccount = "{{CONNECTED_STRIPE_ACCOUNT_ID}}";
service.Create(createOptions, requestOptions);

Solution 1:

Stripe only charges the $2.00 fee on active Connect accounts - i.e. ones that you either transfer money to or customers do direct charges to. As such, there is always a monetary transaction before the Stripe Connect charges are accumulated.

In your case (and mine, actually) you are using separate charges and transfers - so withhold an amount equal to the $2.00 charge the first time you transfer to an account each month (a little bit of database/bookkeeping), as well as a "guess" at the payout charges as well (a "guess" because you know when you transferred money, but don't necessarily know how they will be combined into payouts).

2022-01-20

Pseudo-code:

//if using multiple charges to a single vendor

=> collect charges filtered by transfer_group, summing available, pending, fees, then net as AVAILABLE

=> collect existing transfers by transfer_group, summing amounts as ALREADY_TRANSFERED, and gathering transfer Id's

=> we'll use AVAILABLE_TO_TRANSFER = AVAILABLE - ALREADY_TRANSFERED

=> check Connect Account receipt records (your database) for previous transfers in this calendar month (I did mention bookkeeping)

=> if there are no other receipts, then what we'll set BASE = CONNECTED_ACTIVE (currently $2)

=> the amount we will transfer is the AVAILABLE_TO_TRANSFER less reserved fees

=> We know the potential Payout fees will be based on the amount actually transferred (might be less if transfers are collected into a single payout - remember I said pessimistic)

=> The Payout Fee (which we will save as RESERVE) will be based on the actual transfer, FEE = BASE + PER_PAYOUT + PAYOUT_RATE*PAYOUT, with the pessimistic assumption PAYOUT = TRANSFER. PER_PAYOUT is currently $0.25 and PAYOUT_RATE is currently 0.25%.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE put the actual values in a database somewhere and use variables to pass into the formula - that way you can easily maintain your code.

=> So now we know AVAILABLE_TO_TRANSFER, and we know that TRANSFER = AVAILABLE_TO_TRANSFER - RESERVE, and we know that RESERVE = BASE + PER_PAYOUT + PAYOUT_RATE*TRANSFER

=> a half-page of algebra, and we can get

RESERVE = (AVAILABLE_TO_TRANSFER*PAYOUT_RATE + (BASE + PER_PAYOUT))/(1 + PAYOUT_RATE)

and

TRANSFER = AVAILABLE_TO_TRANSFER - RESERVE

As mentioned, you do need to keep receipts in your database to know if the Active Connected Account fee needs to be collected. Keep the reserves in your platform account until the monthly Connected Account & Payout fees are charged, reconcile the # of actual payouts against the pessimistic guesses above, and you can the withdraw (payout) any excess from your platform account.

2022-01-20a

you can be even more pessimistic (by a small amount) and just use

RESERVE = BASE + PER_PAYOUT + PAYOUT_RATE*AVAILABLE_TO_TRANSFER

You'll just reserve a tiny amount more than you have to - which we are kinda already doing anyway...

BIG NOTE

This is NOT official advice from Stripe - I do not work for them. This is my approach.