Payment and Deposit Integration for Booking Sites

When a deposit makes sense

A deposit is not right for every business. A barber with ten-minute slots and a steady walk-in trade may lose bookings to the extra step than it saves. A colourist booking a three-hour appointment, a photographer reserving a Saturday or a clinic holding a specialist's time has much more to lose from an empty slot. We talk through the trade-off during discovery and set deposits only where they suit the service.

Payment options we can set up

The exact options depend on the payment processor and booking system. The plan lists what your chosen setup supports and what it costs to run.

Card security without the burden

The simplest way to keep card data off your website is to send customers to a payment page hosted by your processor, or to embed the processor's own payment form. The PCI Security Standards Council's self-assessment questionnaire A is designed for merchants who fully outsource card handling in this way. Since the revised SAQ A took effect, merchants whose pages embed a processor's payment form, such as an iframe, must also confirm their site is not susceptible to attacks from scripts that could affect payment; merchants who redirect customers to the processor's own page are outside that particular criterion^1,2. We build to whichever route your processor recommends and document what your acquirer may ask you to confirm. Our guide on payment security for deposits explains this in plain language.

Showing the real price

If a booking fee, service charge or deposit processing fee is mandatory, the first price a customer sees should already include it. The Competition Bureau treats drip pricing, where mandatory fees are added later so the advertised price cannot actually be paid, as false or misleading; government charges such as sales tax are the exception³. We set up the service menu and the booking summary so the amount on the screen is the amount charged, and we show taxes as a separate line where your business collects them.

Deposits and cancellation terms belong together

A deposit raises one question straight away: what happens to my money if I cancel? The answer should sit next to the payment button, not on a separate page that nobody opens. We write the deposit rule and the cancellation rule as short plain statements and show them in the booking summary, the confirmation email and your policies page. Our guide on deposits and cancellation policies online sets out the decisions you need to make first.

Provincial consumer protection laws can affect online agreements. Ontario's government advice, for example, says that for purchases over $50 a business must provide a contract by mail or in a format you can print, with all the details of the transaction⁴. Rules differ by province, and this is website guidance rather than legal advice, so we recommend checking your policy wording with a lawyer if deposits form a large part of your revenue.

Refunds and records

Refunds normally happen in the payment processor's dashboard, not on the website. We make sure each payment is labelled with the booking reference so your team can match a refund to the right appointment. Receipts come from the processor or the booking system, and the confirmation email links to them.

What it costs to run

Processors charge per transaction, and some booking platforms add their own fee on top. Those costs are yours to accept, so the plan lists the expected fees for your setup before you decide. We do not mark up processor fees and we do not take a share of your payments.