How do payment links work?

Send a customer a secure payment page by email, text or QR code — for a deposit, a pay-in-full balance, extras, a no-show fee or any other amount — and see every link in one place.

A payment link is how your team collects a card payment for a booking without ever handling card numbers: click Request payment in the Payment links section of the booking's detail panel, choose what it's for — Deposit, Pay in full, Extras, No-show or Other (once the booking has already paid a deposit or paid in full, the Deposit and Pay in full choices no longer appear — only Extras, No-show and Other) — and enter the amount (between £0.30 and £5,000). You can tick Email and/or Text message to send it straight to the customer, or create the link and show the QR code for them to scan at the table — either way, the customer pays securely on their own phone by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay, and the money goes to your connected Stripe account. Links last 72 hours, each one takes exactly one payment, and the link's URL can't be shown again once you close the window (the status always shows on the booking). The booking's chip flips from Awaiting payment to Paid the moment the customer pays — and while a link is open, the booking's row on the Bookings list and Home also shows a small amber £ chip so you can spot who still owes money at a glance (hover it for what's awaited); a deposit link marks the deposit paid, a pay-in-full link marks the booking paid in full, an extras link adds to its extras total, and a no-show link shows the customer a properly-worded No-show fee payment page rather than a vague "additional payment". You can Void an open link at any time, and cancelling the booking voids its open links automatically (the customer is emailed if the link had been sent to them). If a link is somehow paid after it stopped applying — say the booking was cancelled in the same moment — the payment is refunded automatically. Creating a link needs the booking-edit permission, and there's no way to type a customer's card number in yourself — that's deliberate, for the customer's card security and yours. Before paying, the customer also sees a short "By paying you agree to…" line linking the right terms for what the link is for: a booking payment links your venue's cancellation policy and Booking Terms (the same assembled policy your online booking page shows), while a gift-card link shows the Gift Card Terms. And where you offer the My account page (Pro and above, or with the Loyalty product), a customer with an open link on a booking also sees an amber note on that booking's card — naming the amount still owed and pointing them at the secure link from their email or text, or your phone number — handy when they've lost the original message.

Refunding a paid link: use the refund tools in ResoFlow to keep the payment and booking records together. On the booking's Payment links section, click Refund… on a paid link: refund the full amount or part of it, either as a fixed amount (£) or a percentage (%) of what's left of that payment (worked out on what's still refundable and rounded down to the penny — 50% twice refunds half, then half of the rest), and confirm with your password or a manager's PIN — it needs the same refund permission as deposit refunds. The money goes back to the card the customer paid on, they're emailed, and the link shows Refunded once the whole payment is back (a part-refunded link stays Paid with a note showing how much has gone back — on the booking and in the Settings list). In the rare case an automatic refund permanently fails, the link shows Refund needs attention with a Retry refund button. Two kinds of link refund elsewhere: a link that paid for a customer-made change (a pre-order, added extras or a party-size change) is refunded from the booking itself — the payment card's Refund…, the Extras card's Refund extras… or the pre-order's Refund dishes… — and a gift-card link is refunded from the Gift Cards page, which also settles the card.

Seeing every link in one place: the Payment links tab on the Payments page (in the sidebar under Money) lists all your links — booking links and gift-card links together — with an Awaiting payment view (who still hasn't paid, without opening bookings one by one) and an All links view showing paid, expired, voided and refunded links too, each with its amount, purpose, times and a jump to its booking or gift card. (Like the rest of the Payments page, it needs the financial-reports permission; Settings → Payouts and Stripe keeps a row pointing there.)

How long a link is kept: each payment link is kept for 13 months from the day it was created, then deleted. The guest's details on it are blanked earlier, when your retention period for that record passes. The booking, order, ticket or gift card it paid for keeps its own payment record — that is the money record, and it stays for the life of your account.

Gift cards use payment links too — staff can sell a gift card or activate a physical one by link, and the card is only created (or activated) when the payment lands. See How do I sell gift cards? and Physical gift cards. Related: How do pay-in-full bookings work? · How do I sell extras with bookings? · How do I cancel a booking (and what happens to the deposit)?

If an automatic refund needs checking: Refund being checked means ResoFlow is still verifying the payment provider’s outcome; it does not confirm that the money has been returned. Pending or uncertain attempts are checked again automatically without starting a second repayment. Refund needs attention means a team member must review it. Retry refund checks the original payment and existing refund first, and starts another attempt only when the previous attempt is confirmed to have failed and the full amount is still available to return. If the original payment or an older attempt cannot be verified, contact support; the system keeps it open for review. The link shows Refunded, and a completion email is attempted, only after the full return is confirmed.