A customer wants to book a car at nine on a Friday night. If your process is "email us and we will send bank details", they get your reply on Monday morning - by which point they have booked the company that let them pay there and then. The booking was yours to lose, and a manual payment step lost it.
A booking is only real once money has changed hands
A held car with no payment is a promise, and promises get broken when a better plan comes along. Taking a deposit or the full amount online at the moment of booking turns a maybe into a commitment. It also closes the sale while the customer is still keen, instead of leaving a gap in which they shop around. With Webkio, online deposits and payments are part of the booking flow, so the car is held and paid for in one step.
Deposits do the filtering for you
A refundable deposit is the simplest no-show filter there is. Someone who has put money down turns up; someone who was idly holding a car for free often does not. On Webkio a deposit is taken as an authorised hold rather than a captured charge - the money is reserved on the card but not actually taken - which means it carries no platform fee, and you release it at drop-off. If you are losing cars to empty slots, deposits and a clear no-show policy are the fix.
The money goes to you, not to us
This matters more than it sounds. Payments on Webkio run through Stripe Connect straight into your own Stripe account, and Webkio never holds your money. You pay a 2% platform fee per captured online payment on Starter, dropping to 1% from Growth Business, and Stripe charges its own processing fee on top. Set that against a marketplace commission and it is a fraction of the cost, with none of the wait for a platform to pay out. Because the deposit hold is not a captured charge, it is fee-free entirely; you only pay when you actually take money.
Less admin at the counter
Payment taken up front is payment you are not chasing at handover. No card machine fumbling while a queue builds, no "the transfer has not come through yet", no awkward conversation about the deposit. The car is paid for before the customer arrives, and handover becomes checking a licence and handing over keys. The confirmation and reminder go out automatically, so nobody is manually emailing bank details at all.
The honest limit
Online payment is not free, and it should not pretend to be. Stripe takes its processing fee and Webkio takes its 2%, so on a thin-margin economy hire the cost is real. But weigh it against the no-shows a deposit prevents and the Friday-night bookings a customer places because they could pay immediately, and for most rental businesses it pays for itself several times over. If you genuinely only take a booking or two a month, manual may still be fine - the case for online payment grows with volume.
Start free and connect your Stripe account; the full reservation and payment setup is covered on the car rental website builder page, and you can see the real cost of each channel in the commission calculator.
FAQ
Does Webkio hold my customers' money?
No. Payments run through Stripe Connect into your own Stripe account. Webkio never holds the funds; it charges a 2% platform fee per captured payment, dropping to 1% from Growth Business, and Stripe charges its own processing fee.
Do I pay a fee on refundable deposits?
No. A deposit is an authorised hold, not a captured charge - the amount is reserved on the card but not taken - so it carries no platform fee. You only pay the fee on money you actually capture.
Will taking deposits reduce no-shows?
Usually, yes. A customer who has money reserved on their card is far more likely to turn up than one holding a car for free. Pair deposits with a clear cancellation policy for the best effect.
Read next
- How to get more direct car rental bookings - owning the customer, not just the sale.
- Reduce car rental no-shows and cancellations - deposits and policy working together.
- Turn website visitors into car rental bookings - getting them to the payment step.