Online Payments Are Here
Collecting payments from a group has never really been hard. It's just been annoying. You send an invoice. You wait. You follow up. You check your bank. Then you reconcile everything by hand. It works, but it takes more effort than it should and the lag between "owed" and "paid" is mostly the lag of human follow-up.
That changes today. We've added online invoice payments, powered by Stripe Connect. Group owners can connect their own Stripe account, and members can pay an invoice in a single click.
Setting it up
The setup takes about five minutes. From Group Settings → Payment Collection, click Connect Stripe and step through Stripe's standard onboarding. If you already have a Stripe account you can simply link it; if you don't, they'll walk you through creating one. That's all there is on the setup side, and you don't need to change how you create or send invoices afterwards. Generate them from usage logs, send them to members — exactly like before. What changes is what happens after the invoice arrives.
How payment works for members
Every sent or overdue invoice now carries a "Pay Online" button. A member clicks it, lands on a Stripe-hosted checkout page with everything pre-filled, pays with their card, and they're done. No back-and-forth, no manual steps. As soon as the payment goes through, Kai marks the invoice paid automatically — no checking your bank, no updating statuses, no wondering whether someone actually paid. Members who'd rather pay by bank transfer still can; this is an option, not a replacement.
Where the money actually goes
Payments go directly to your Stripe account. Kai never holds your funds. Stripe processes the transaction and transfers it to you the same way any other Stripe transaction would, with standard Stripe fees applying and a small Kai application fee per transaction.
Knowing where you stand
Your Stripe Connect status is always visible in Group Settings, with four possible states:
- Active — everything's working, payments are live.
- Pending — onboarding isn't finished yet.
- Restricted — Stripe needs more information from you.
- Not connected — you haven't set it up yet.
If Stripe needs anything from you, the status updates automatically.
Online payments are available to all groups on all plans. All you have to do is connect your Stripe account, in Group Settings → Payment Collection.
