Payment Setup

The Payment tab is where you connect the account that takes card payments from your fans, and where you set the currency you charge them in. Until this is set up, TribeNest can't take a single payment on your behalf.

The account you connect is yours. Fans pay into it, refunds come out of it, and the money is never held by TribeNest on the way through.

Only the workspace owner sees this tab. Team members without owner access don't see it. For more on roles, see team.

Before you start

The Payment tab needs to know which country your business is in before it can offer you anything. If you haven't filled in the business address tab yet, you'll see a short note asking for your address first, with a Set up address button that takes you there.

Once your country is set, come back here.

Choosing a processor

At the top of the tab there's a dropdown labelled Select payment provider. It lists the card processors that can serve the country on your business address, and each option is named after the processor it connects to.

There are two, and which ones you see depends on where your business is based:

• One serves most of the world: North and South America, the UK and Europe, Asia-Pacific, plus South Africa and Egypt.
• The other serves a group of African markets: Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Côte d'Ivoire, Egypt and Rwanda.

If your country is served by both, both appear and the choice is yours. A processor you have already connected stays in the list even if it isn't offered for your country any more, so you never lose the panel for an account you're still using.

Picking an option in the dropdown just opens that processor's panel. It doesn't commit you to anything yet.

Connecting the worldwide processor

This one hands you over to the processor's own sign-up flow, and you come back when it's done.

1. Open Settings from the sidebar.
2. Click the Payment tab.
3. Pick the worldwide processor from the dropdown.
4. Click Connect.
5. A new tab opens on the processor's site. Follow the prompts there. You'll be asked for things like your legal name, date of birth, government ID and a bank account.
6. When you finish, come back to your TribeNest dashboard. The panel now shows Connected, with a Disconnect button beside it.

If something goes wrong mid-flow, nothing is lost. Come back to this tab and click Connect again to pick up where you left off.

Connecting the African-markets processor

This one works differently. The account is one you hold in your own name with that processor, and you tell TribeNest how to use it by pasting two keys from their dashboard.

1. Pick that processor from the dropdown. Its panel opens under a heading naming your account with that processor, and a ? beside that heading explains that the account stays yours.
2. Sign in to that processor's own dashboard and open its settings page for API keys.
3. Copy the Public key and paste it into the Public key box.
4. Copy the Secret key and paste it into the Secret key box.
5. Click Connect.

Nothing is stored until the processor confirms the pair works, so a rejected save can't leave you with a broken checkout that only shows up when a fan tries to buy. If a key is wrong, the error appears next to the box that caused it.

After the keys are accepted

The panel switches to a summary that shows:

• Whether the account is in Live mode or Test mode.
• Your public key in full.
• The last four characters of your secret key. The rest is encrypted and never shown again, which is explained behind the ? beside it.
• When TribeNest last checked the keys.

Two buttons sit at the top of that summary. Replace keys opens the boxes again so you can paste a new pair, for example after rotating them. Disconnect deletes the stored keys and stops new payments going through that processor. Payments already taken are unaffected.

Send the payment updates back to TribeNest

Under the summary, TribeNest shows a web address with a Copy button beside it.

Copy it and paste it into the same settings page of your processor's dashboard, in the field that asks where payment updates should be sent. Then save it there.

Test keys

If you paste the processor's test keys instead of your live ones, a notice appears saying so, and it stays there until you replace them. Test keys are fine while you're trying things out, but no real money is collected. Swap them for your live keys before you sell.

The limit on a basic account

Beside the connection, TribeNest shows the lifetime collection limit that applies to a basic, unregistered account with that processor in your country, with a ? explaining what happens when you reach it. In short: the processor stops accepting payments on that account, and lifting the limit means upgrading to a registered business with them. That is between you and them, and TribeNest doesn't count down to it for you, so keep an eye on it yourself.

Setting your currency

Each processor's panel has a Currency section under it, followed by that panel's own Save button.

The currency you pick here is what fans are charged in across your whole workspace: products, memberships, tickets, courses, coaching sessions, everything.

1. Pick a currency from the Currency dropdown.
2. Click Save.

The list offers US Dollar, Euro, British Pound, Canadian Dollar, Australian Dollar, New Zealand Dollar, Swiss Franc, Japanese Yen and Nigerian Naira, each shown with its symbol and three-letter code. TribeNest narrows that list to the currencies your connected account can actually charge in, so you can't pick one that would fail at checkout.

Save does two things

Pressing Save in a panel stores the currency and makes that panel's processor the one your checkouts use. That's the only place the choice is made, so what you're looking at and what your fans pay through can never drift apart. A ? beside the Currency label says the same thing on screen.

If you never save a choice at all, TribeNest works it out for you: it uses whichever processor you actually have connected. The dropdown opens on that one too, rather than sitting empty every time you come back.

Changing currency later

If you change the currency and press Save, a confirmation dialog appears first and lists what will happen:

• All your products, scheduling sessions, courses and events will display prices in the new currency.
• Existing members carry on being billed in the old currency for their current subscriptions.
• New members are charged in the new currency from then on.
• You'll probably want to update your membership tier prices and other prices to match.

Click Yes, change currency to go ahead, or Cancel to back out.

What happens once you're connected

With an account connected, a currency saved and a processor chosen:

• Your Store can take orders. See the store.
• Your memberships can collect recurring payments. See memberships.
• Ticket sales, course sales, coaching bookings and donations all check out properly.
• Money lands in your bank on whatever schedule your processor uses for you.

For payouts, refunds and reconciliation, head to income.

Where to go next

• Set the country and address this tab depends on → business address
• Tell TribeNest what kind of business you run → workspace type and language
• Open your storefront and list your first product → the store
• See payouts, refunds and balances → income