How payments work

When a member settles a balance in Syndik8, the money goes to the syndicate, not to Syndik8. The syndicate connects its own payment account, and every charge a member pays lands directly in that account. Syndik8 never holds the funds and never sits between the member and the syndicate’s bank. This page explains that arrangement, the small fee Syndik8 takes for running the rails, and why a card payment and a Direct Debit behave so differently.

Where the money goes

The syndicate is the merchant. Before any member can pay online, an admin connects a payment account for the syndicate, and identity checks are completed on the payment provider’s hosted pages. From then on, when a member pays a charge, the payment is made directly to the syndicate’s connected account. The model is deliberately direct: there is no Syndik8-held balance that fills up and pays out later, and there is no waiting for Syndik8 to forward your money on.

Because the syndicate is the merchant, the syndicate also owns what comes after a payment. Refunds and disputes are the syndicate’s responsibility, handled against its own account, not Syndik8’s. That is the natural consequence of the money never passing through us: the party that received the funds is the party that can return them.

The platform fee

Syndik8 charges a small platform fee on each payment for operating the payment rails. By default this is 0.5% of the amount collected, and it is taken from the syndicate’s side of the transaction. The member always pays the face value of the charge: if a member owes £100, that is what leaves their account, and the fee is deducted from what the syndicate receives, not added on top of what the member pays.

This keeps the member’s experience simple. A balance reads as a single figure, a member pays that figure, and the cost of running the collection is borne by the syndicate that benefits from automated payments. The platform fee is separate from your Syndik8 subscription, which is what the syndicate pays to use the software itself.

Card payments are one-offs

A card payment is a single, member-initiated charge. From the My Balance screen a member chooses to pay one charge or to pay everything outstanding, and completes the payment there and then (in the native payment sheet on a phone, or in a hosted checkout in a browser). It is immediate and it is one-off: nothing recurring is set up, and the member decides each time whether and when to pay.

Card suits the member who wants to clear a balance on their own schedule, with no standing arrangement and no commitment to future collections. The trade-off is that someone has to remember to do it. Nothing is collected automatically, so an unpaid balance stays unpaid until a member acts.

Direct Debit is automatic and scheduled

Direct Debit is the opposite trade. A member sets up a mandate once (a standing instruction permitting the syndicate to collect what is owed), and from then on the syndicate’s collection schedule pulls whatever is outstanding from the member’s bank account on a regular cadence, typically monthly. The amount is variable: it is whatever the member owes at the time of each collection, not a fixed figure, which fits the reality of varying usage and expenses.

The appeal is that nobody has to remember. Once the mandate is active, the member’s balance is collected automatically and the admin or treasurer is not chasing payments by hand. The trade-off is that Direct Debit runs on the Bacs scheme’s timeline rather than instantly, and that timeline brings rules a card payment does not have. The mechanics of mandates, schedules, and collections are set out in the Direct Debit reference.

Why a Direct Debit takes a few days, and why notice comes first

A Direct Debit does not move money the moment it is instructed. The Bacs scheme settles collections over a few working days, so a collection is dated roughly two London working days ahead, and the funds reach the syndicate’s account after that rather than the same day. This is inherent to how Direct Debit works in the UK, not a delay Syndik8 adds.

Bacs also requires that the member is told before each collection, so every Direct Debit is preceded by an advance notice. The payment provider emails the legal advance-notice message about two working days before the debit, and Syndik8 also shows an in-app “debit incoming” notice so the upcoming collection is visible inside the app. The notice states the amount and the date, which means a member is never surprised by a Direct Debit landing; they have seen the figure and the date in advance.

The Direct Debit Guarantee

Direct Debit in the UK carries the Direct Debit Guarantee, and Syndik8 honours it. A member can reclaim any Direct Debit collection through their bank (an indemnity claim) without having to justify it. When that happens, the reclaimed collection is handled through Syndik8’s reversals flow, which re-opens the affected charges so the position is accurate again. The Guarantee is one of the reasons Direct Debit is a comfortable way to pay: the protection sits with the member who set up the mandate.

If a collection fails for another reason (insufficient funds, or a cancelled mandate), the member and the syndicate’s admins are notified, the charges are released, and they are retried on the next scheduled run. A failed collection does not quietly disappear; it comes back round on the next cycle.

Why a Direct Debit shows as “Stripe” on your statement

When a Direct Debit is collected, it appears on the member’s bank statement as “Stripe”, not as Syndik8 or the syndicate’s name. Stripe is the payment provider that operates the collection, and the statement descriptor reflects the entity that submitted the Bacs instruction. It is worth telling members this in advance: a line reading “Stripe” can look unfamiliar against a balance they expected to see attributed to their flying group, and knowing the name beforehand stops a correct collection from looking like a mistake.

This is the one place the provider’s name surfaces to a member, alongside the consent email that sets up the mandate. Everywhere else in Syndik8, payments are presented in the syndicate’s terms: your balance, your charges, your syndicate’s account.

Seeing what happened

Whichever way a member pays, the record is in one place. The My Balance screen opens a Payment History showing each settlement (every card payment and every Direct Debit collection) with its current status. That history reflects the authoritative state on the server, so it is accurate about whether a payment is pending, in progress, succeeded, or failed, rather than an optimistic local guess. The detail of those statuses is in the Payment History reference.