In a standard Stripe account, you will see a negative balance if a booking has been refunded after it has been paid out to your bank account. Here’s what’s happening step by step:
- The Hipcamper pays and the money goes into your Stripe balance. Stripe deducts its processing fee.
- Your earnings are paid out to your bank account.
- When a refund is issued to the Hipcamper, Stripe immediately sends the money back to the customer from the Stripe account balance.
- Since the funds were already paid out to your bank, there’s no money left in Stripe to cover the refund. The account balance becomes negative.
- Stripe will recover that amount by offsetting it against future incoming payments.
To summarise the process: Stripe essentially fronts the refund amount to the Hipcamper and expects to recover it from the Host. The negative balance represents money the Host now owes back to Stripe.
Stripe does not return the Stripe transaction fee on refunds.
Simple example
- Hipcamper pays £100
- Stripe fee: £1.70, Hipcamp service fee: £15 → Host receives £83.30 in Stripe balance
- £83.30 is paid out to the bank
- Host refunds £100
- Stripe sends £100 back to the Hipcamper
- Host has £0 in Stripe balance to cover the refund
- Result: -£85 balance in Stripe (£83.30 earnings + £1.70 Stripe fee).
You can view payment and refund activity in your Stripe Dashboard by clicking 'All Activity' at the top of the page under 'Transactions'.