How payments work

Free Invoice Automation helps your clients pay you, but the money never passes through us. Card payments go straight to your own Stripe account, bank transfers go to your own bank, and local payments go to your own wallet. We never hold your funds and never take a percentage of an invoice payment. This page explains the payment methods, what a client sees, and how an invoice moves to paid.

Payment methods (rails)

Each way of getting paid is called a rail. You connect the rails you want for each business, then choose which ones each invoice accepts. There are three kinds:

What is available when

Other rails, such as PayPal, Razorpay, Paystack, Safepay, Wise, Payoneer, bKash, M-Pesa and PIX, are added when real users ask for them. Adding one changes nothing in the app, the pay page or the API: it simply appears as a new rail you can connect.

How a client pays

1. You send an invoice by email, or share its pay link. Every sent invoice has a pay page at freeinvoiceautomation.com/pay/....
2. The client opens the pay page. It shows the invoice in your branding, the amount due, and every payment method you accept for that invoice.
3. The client picks a method:
   • Card (Stripe): they click Pay by card and pay on Stripe's hosted Checkout page.
   • Bank transfer or a QR code: they pay from their bank or wallet, then click I have paid and can upload a proof of payment.
4. The invoice moves to paid, or partially paid if only part was paid, once the payment is confirmed.

Clients can pay part of an invoice when partial payments are allowed (the default). From the week of 25 January 2027, invoices can also carry a deposit and instalments, and the pay page asks for the next amount due.

When is an invoice paid?

This protects you from losing money by mistake. If a client closes the browser after paying, the webhook still arrives and the invoice is marked paid. If someone visits a success URL without paying, nothing happens: the success page only says the payment is being confirmed. If a webhook is ever lost, a reconciliation job fetches the true state from the provider and corrects it.

Each payment records where its paid state came from:

Balances

Every invoice keeps three amounts, all in integer minor units of the invoice currency:

• amount_paid_minor: the sum of payments received.
• amount_credited_minor: the sum of credit notes and applied client credit.
• balance_minor: total_minor - amount_paid_minor - amount_credited_minor.

{
  "data": {
    "document_id": "0193f2b4-5a6b-7c8d-9e0f-1a2b3c4d5e6f",
    "status": "partially_paid",
    "currency": "USD",
    "total_minor": "120000",
    "amount_paid_minor": "50000",
    "amount_credited_minor": "0",
    "balance_minor": "70000"
  }
}

Set up payment methods

Through the API and MCP

Your systems can follow payments with the payment.succeeded, payment.recorded, payment.refunded, payment_proof.submitted, document.paid and document.partially_paid webhook events.

Rules

• No cut, no holding. We never take a percentage of an invoice payment and never hold money for you. Provider fees (for example Stripe's) are between you and the provider.
• No card data on our servers. Card details are entered only on Stripe's hosted pages.
• Voided invoices cannot be paid. Voiding an invoice cancels its open payment links and the pay page shows "VOID".
• No ads. Pay pages never show ads, affiliates, sponsors or analytics.

Permissions

Errors

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