Let clients pay by card — straight into your studio's own processor account. Linebook never touches it.
Cash and e-Transfer work out of the box. To take cards, connect your studio's own processor account — Stripe, Square or Clover. The money goes directly to you and Linebook never touches it.
Connect
1Settings → Payments → Card payments, then connect Stripe, Square or Clover. You're taken to that processor to finish a short onboarding.
2Back in Linebook, once the processor confirms you're ready, turn on Card as a checkout option.
More than one processor
A studio isn't always on one processor. If one artist is on Square and another on Stripe, connect both: an account can belong to the shop or to a single chair, and a payment for that chair goes to their account, otherwise to the shop's.
Each account carries its own rate, so a shop on two processors records each one's fee correctly rather than averaging them.
Disconnecting one artist's account doesn't stop the shop taking cards — it falls back to the shop's.
How it works
A client paying by card checks out on your booking site; the charge lands directly in your own processor account.
Linebook takes nothing from it — no application fee, no cut of the deposit.
Refunds, payouts and disputes all live in your own processor's dashboard.
Card at the desk — after the session
From a booking's Manage screen (web or the app), Charge card · QR puts the outstanding balance — plus a tip if they'd like — on screen as a QR. The client scans and pays on their own phone, and the ledger updates the moment the processor confirms. No card reader needed. This one is Stripe-only for now.
Have a Stripe Terminal reader? Register it in your own Stripe dashboard and it appears next to the QR — send the charge to the reader and take the tap there, at card-present rates. Clover readers are driven from the Clover device itself; record what they took as a card payment and the books come out identical.
Paying half in cash and the rest on the card is one action, not two: in the app, add a row per method and Record only lights up once they add to what's owed. Each tender is still its own ledger line, with its own method and fee, and the ledger reads them back as "split 1 of 2".
Why it's your account, not ours
The alternative is the common one: the platform is the merchant, money lands with them, and they pass it on later minus a cut. That is simpler to build and worse to live with — so this is the deliberate choice, and it is worth knowing what it buys you.
You keep the whole deposit. Platforms that hold the money typically take a percentage of every one, on top of what the card network charges. Over a year of deposits that is a real number, and it grows as you do.
You are the merchant of record. Your rates are yours to negotiate as your volume grows, and a better rate reaches you rather than the platform.
Payouts do not wait on us. The money is in your account on your processor's schedule, not ours — and a bad month for Linebook cannot become a bad month for your rent.
Refunds, chargebacks and disputes are yours to run directly, with your own processor, rather than through a support queue.
NoteOne caveat worth stating plainly: being your own merchant means your processor's rate is the rate you pay, and when the card networks cut Canadian interchange for small businesses in late 2024, not every processor passed the reduction on. Being the merchant lets you leave one that doesn't. It does not make you immune to one that doesn't.
NoteYou keep 100% of every deposit. Your flat monthly (or annual) subscription is the only thing Linebook charges.