Glossary · Billing
Direct pay
Updated
Direct pay means the card gets charged for this trip, by the person who took it or ordered it, either when the booking is made or when the leg completes. It is the retail side of the business: the wedding party, the family going to the airport, the traveller whose company does not have an account. Roughly speaking, if there is no invoice, it is direct pay.
Direct pay is good for cash flow and bad for disputes. The money arrives within days instead of weeks, but the final total is often unknown at booking because wait time, tolls and parking are added after the run. The standard practice is to authorise or collect the base at booking and settle the remainder on completion, with a clear receipt.
The common mistake is charging the quoted figure and forgetting the extras, or charging the extras without telling anyone. Either way the operator eats the difference or fields a chargeback. The leg total needs to be final before the card is settled, and the receipt needs to show each component.
How liverybook handles it
A booking is either tied to a billing account or set to direct pay. For direct pay, card details are collected through Stripe in the operator UI or in the portal checkout, the leg total is computed as base rate + gratuity + tolls + parking + wait time charge + extras − discount, and the payment posts as a transaction on the single ledger. A payment receipt template is among the nine emails sent from the tenant's own sending credentials. See billing.
Related terms
This term lives in Billing. liverybook is the operating system for ground transportation.