What this actually is
Sembr uses Stripe Connect. Your organization gets its own Stripe account, in your organization's name, with your bank details on it. Sembr never holds your money and cannot move it anywhere except to you.
That is also why we cannot do this part for you. Stripe has to verify your organization directly, because it is your account.
Connecting
Settings, then the payments section, then start onboarding. You are handed to Stripe, you come back when they are done.
Stripe will ask for:
- your organization's legal name and address
- a business or charity registration number, depending on your type and country
- the bank account payouts should go to
- identity details for whoever is the responsible person on the account
Have those to hand before you start. Stripe saves progress, so you can leave and come back, but a half-finished account cannot take money.
When you can start charging
Not when onboarding finishes. When Stripe says the account can accept charges.
Those are different moments and the gap is normally minutes but can be days if Stripe wants a document. Sembr asks Stripe directly rather than assuming, so the answer in your dashboard is Stripe's answer, not a guess.
Until then, everything else works. You can build tiers, import members, raise invoices and send them. What you cannot do is collect a card payment against one.
What Sembr takes
Nothing.
You pay Stripe their published rate, typically 2.9% plus a small flat fee on a credit card, less on a bank transfer. Sembr adds no platform fee on top and takes no cut of the transaction. Our price is the subscription on your plan and that is all of it.
Payouts
Stripe pays out to your bank on their schedule, usually the next business day once the account is established. Change the schedule in your own Stripe dashboard, not in Sembr; it is your account.
Payments that did not come through Stripe
Cheques, e-transfers, cash at a meeting. Open the invoice and record a manual payment against it. The invoice settles, the member's renewal advances the same way it would have on a card, and the audit record says a human recorded it.
Refunds and chargebacks
Issue a refund from Stripe. Sembr hears about it and books it against the right invoice by itself, so your reporting stays true without you doing anything twice.
A chargeback is handled the same way, and it is tracked separately from a refund on purpose. They are different events and a report that blends them is telling you something false about your own year.
If something goes wrong
Every payment event Stripe sends us is processed exactly once and recorded. If one cannot be processed, it is set aside rather than dropped, and it stays visible until it is dealt with. Nothing about a payment silently disappears.