Getting paid

When someone books you, the customer pays Around at the moment you accept. We pass that money to your own Stripe account, and Stripe pays it into your bank.

The account is yours, not ours. We can see whether it is ready to receive money and nothing else: not your bank details, not your ID. That is the point of doing it through Stripe rather than asking you for those things directly.

Have these to hand and the form takes minutes rather than days:

• Your legal name and date of birth, as they appear on your ID
• A home or business address in the United States
• The last four digits of your Social Security number
• A photo of your driver's licence, state ID or passport
• Your bank account and routing numbers
• A link people can look you up at: a website or a social profile

If you registered a business, you will also want its legal name and EIN. If you did not, you do not need one. See below.

From your Account page, press Set up payouts. That opens Stripe, which walks you through:

1. Confirming your phone number and email
2. Choosing a business type: individual, or a registered company
3. Your legal name, date of birth and address
4. What you do and where people can find you
5. Verifying who you are, usually with a photo of your ID
6. The bank account you want paying

When you finish, Stripe returns you to Around. You can stop partway and come back. Stripe keeps what you have entered, and the button will say Finish setting up payouts.

Most creators on Around are individual / sole proprietor. Choose that if you work under your own name and never registered a company. You do not need an EIN, a business bank account or a registered address for it.

Choose a company type only if you actually registered one. An LLC or a corporation with its own EIN. Picking it when you have not will stall you at a screen asking for documents that do not exist.

Stripe asks for a business website. Plenty of creators do not have one, and you do not need to build one to get through this.

Whatever you give must actually load and describe your work. A link to an empty or private page is the most common reason this step is rejected.

Anyone moving money on behalf of other people has to know who those people are, and it is a legal requirement, not a preference of ours or Stripe's. That is why you are asked for a date of birth, part of your Social Security number, and usually a photo of your ID.

Those details go to Stripe, not to Around. We never see them. The most we are told is whether your account is cleared to be paid.

You give Stripe a routing number and an account number for a US bank. A personal current account is fine for a sole proprietor. The name on the account should match the name you gave Stripe.

Prepaid cards and most online-only wallets are not accepted. If your bank uses a different routing number for direct deposit than for wires, use the direct deposit one.

The form itself takes about ten minutes. Verification is usually immediate, but can take a day or two if something needs a human.

Your first payout takes longer than later ones, because Stripe holds it briefly while the account settles. After that, money arrives on a regular schedule you can see in your Stripe dashboard.

You can accept bookings while verification is pending. You just cannot be paid out until it clears, which is why we ask you to finish it early rather than on the day of your first job.

Your Account page will show Set up: you can be paid, and a link to your own Stripe dashboard. That dashboard is yours: it shows your balance, every payout, and the bank details behind them.

To change your bank account, payout schedule or business details, make the change in Stripe rather than here, because it is their record that governs where the money goes.

More about selling on Around