Our platform uses a simple fee structure:
- Service Fee (Commission): VanLife Connect charges Providers a 10% commission on each completed booking. This percentage is calculated on the total price of the service. It is deducted from the payout to the Provider.
- No fee for Travellers: Travellers do not pay any add-on platform fee beyond the listed service price. The price you see for a service is what you pay (inclusive of any GST if applicable). We don’t add booking fees or surcharges on top for the Traveller.
- Payment Processing Costs: Stripe Connect fees (currently 1.75%* + A$0.30 per transaction) are deducted from the Provider’s payout. (In other words, Providers bear the processing cost, similar to how a merchant pays a card fee.) These are separate from the 10% platform commission.
Example: If a service is priced at $100, the Traveller pays $100. Of that, $10 is the 10% platform commission, and roughly $2.05 is Stripe’s fee for processing (assuming an Australian card). The Provider would receive about $87.95 in that case. (We provide a detailed breakdown in the app’s payout info so Providers can see this clearly.)
No listing or subscription fees: We do not charge anything to create an account or list your services. Browsing the marketplace and posting on the noticeboard are free. The only time money is taken by the platform is when a booking is successfully completed (via the commission), or in rare penalty cases like late cancellations as discussed. Our business model is purely commission-based.
* Payment processing fees charged by Stripe are calculated per transaction and rounded to the nearest cent in accordance with Stripe’s standard pricing and rounding rules, which are outside the control of VanLife Connect.