How SpareHolidays uses Stripe

Who holds my money between paying and the seller getting paid?

The buyer's card is charged in full at checkout. The payment is split immediately by Stripe: the seller's share goes straight into the seller's own Stripe account, and SpareHolidays receives only its fee. SpareHolidays does not hold the seller's money, but it does control the payout date — the seller cannot withdraw their share to their bank until the confirmation window closes. The seller is paid out only after the buyer confirms the transfer, or the confirmation window closes without a dispute. If the transfer never happens, or the purchase is cancelled before that point, the buyer is refunded.

Under the hood this is what Stripe calls a destination charge: the moment your card is approved, Stripe sends the seller's share straight to the seller's own Stripe account and keeps SpareHolidays' fee for itself. Nobody, including SpareHolidays, moves that money afterward by hand — Stripe does the split in the same instant it takes the payment.

The Terms set the payout clock: for a booking with travel dates the seller is scheduled to be paid 2 calendar days after the buyer's trip ends, and for a voucher without dates 7 days after the buyer confirms the transfer.Source: SpareHolidays — SpareHolidays Terms — payment handling and fund release (checked 2026-08-29)

What SpareHolidays controls is not custody of the funds, since they already sit in the seller's own account, but the payout schedule on that account. The seller's connected Stripe account only releases money to their own bank when SpareHolidays' systems tell it to, which is what keeps the timing above true instead of Stripe paying the seller out on its own default schedule.

What does Stripe handle, and what does SpareHolidays handle?

Stripe handles everything that touches money or card data directly: taking the payment, running the identity check, and holding and moving the seller's payout balance. SpareHolidays handles what sits around that — showing you the total before you pay, deciding when a seller's payout is allowed to release, and reviewing what a seller submits as evidence of the booking.

A real person reviews the booking evidence supplied by the seller before the listing goes live, and that review is entirely SpareHolidays' own process — Stripe has no part in judging whether a listing is genuine.

SpareHolidays never runs its own card processing and never handles a customer's raw card details — that work belongs to Stripe alone. What SpareHolidays' own systems see is a payment status and an amount, plus whatever Stripe reports back about whether a seller's connected account can currently receive charges and payouts.

Why do I have to verify my identity with Stripe before I can sell?

Identity verification with Stripe is required before a seller can accept an offer or hand over a booking.

SpareHolidays enforces that check at two specific moments in a sale: when a seller accepts a buyer's offer, and again when a seller submits proof that they completed the handover with the supplier. Try either step unverified and the action is refused outright, not just flagged for later.

What the identity check does not do is confirm anything about the booking itself. It confirms who is receiving the money, not that a listing is accurately priced, that the airline or hotel will actually permit the transfer, or that the trip is what it is described as.

What happens to my money if the transfer fails or the seller never hands the booking over?

If the transfer never happens, or the purchase is cancelled before that point, the buyer is refunded.

Where a transfer goes wrong the outcome is decided under those Terms rather than automatically. A transfer that never starts and times out is cancelled and refunded; once it has progressed or a dispute is open, the evidence is reviewed and the result can be a full refund, a partial one, or release to the seller. Keep everything the seller sends you.

On the seller's side, a refund reverses the same split that created it: the share Stripe already sent to the seller's account is pulled back to fund the refund, and SpareHolidays' own fee is returned with it. A refunded sale does not quietly cost SpareHolidays money on top of costing the seller the sale.

What card details can SpareHolidays actually see?

None of your card number, expiry date or security code ever reaches SpareHolidays — you type them into a form Stripe controls directly, not one SpareHolidays built.

That form is Stripe's own Payment Element. It renders inside the checkout page but is not part of SpareHolidays' code; it talks to Stripe directly, so raw card data never passes through SpareHolidays' servers at all.

What Stripe does hand back afterward is limited to a payment status plus small fragments like the card's last few digits and its expiry month, sent through webhook events. SpareHolidays strips even those fragments out before the underlying event is stored for the long term, rather than keeping a card trail sitting in a database.

Why does SpareHolidays control when the seller is paid, if it never holds the money?

Because the seller's Stripe account is set to a manual payout schedule instead of Stripe's own default one — money can sit in that account without moving to the seller's bank until SpareHolidays' systems release it.

An open dispute, payout hold, account ban, or payout re-authentication requirement can delay release.

That gap exists precisely because the money already reaches the seller's own Stripe account immediately, which is what makes this different from an arrangement where SpareHolidays' own account holds anything. Once the funds are no longer sitting anywhere SpareHolidays controls directly, the payout schedule is the lever left to keep a buyer's confirmation window meaningful.

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