Payments Policy

This Payments Policy explains how invoice payments, platform fees, and buy-now-pay-later ("BNPL") plans work on BuddyTMS. It supplements our Terms & Conditions, Refund Policy, and Wallet, Tokens & Payments Policy.

BuddyTMS provides software only. For freight invoices between a broker and a shipper or customer, the broker (your workspace) is the merchant of record — BuddyTMS is not a party to that transaction, does not take title to freight, and does not guarantee payment.

When a customer pays a freight invoice through Pay Now (Stripe), BuddyTMS charges the broker's workspace a platform fee, currently 2% of the amount paid. The fee is deducted automatically from the Stripe payment before funds settle to your connected account; it is not billed separately.

The platform fee applies only to Pay Now (Stripe) invoice payments. Manually recording a payment for cash, check, ACH, or another offline method you already collected does not incur a platform fee.

The current fee percentage is configurable by Buddy Ops in GodsEye and may be adjusted for the platform generally or for an individual workspace. Any change to your workspace's rate is reflected in your billing settings before it takes effect on new payments.

Pay Now lets your customers pay an invoice online by card or bank transfer, processed through Stripe Connect. To accept Pay Now, your workspace completes Stripe's onboarding and connects a Stripe account; funds flow from the customer through Stripe to your connected account, less the platform fee described above.

Manual "Record Payment" remains available for offline methods (cash, check, ACH, wire, etc.) regardless of whether Pay Now is enabled for your workspace. Recording a payment manually does not move money through Stripe and is not subject to the platform fee.

Stripe's own fees for processing card and bank payments are separate from our platform fee and are disclosed by Stripe.

Where enabled, BNPL options (Affirm, Klarna, and/or Afterpay) may be offered to shippers paying an auto-transport invoice. BNPL is intended for auto shippers only and may not be available for all freight types or all workspaces.

When a shipper chooses a BNPL provider, your workspace (the broker) is still paid in full up front through Stripe, less any applicable platform fee, exactly as with a standard Pay Now payment. You are not waiting on installments and you do not bear installment credit risk.

The installment plan itself is an agreement solely between the shipper and the BNPL lender (Affirm, Klarna, or Afterpay, as applicable). BuddyTMS and the broker are not parties to that lending agreement, do not underwrite it, and are not responsible for its terms, approval, interest, or repayment.

BuddyTMS does not guarantee that any invoice will be paid, that a customer's payment method will be valid, or that funds will settle on any particular schedule. We are not a payment guarantor, factoring company, or insurer, and we do not advance funds on unpaid invoices.

Failed payments, disputed charges, insufficient funds, and similar payment-processing outcomes are handled per Stripe's standard processes and are outside our control.

Refunds, price adjustments, and disputes concerning a freight invoice (for example, disputed charges, service complaints, cancellations, or damage claims) are between the shipper/customer and the broker who issued the invoice — not BuddyTMS. Brokers are responsible for resolving these directly with their customers, including issuing any refund through Pay Now or by other means.

This is separate from refunds for BuddyTMS subscription fees, activation fees, or marketplace tokens, which are governed by our Refund Policy and our Wallet, Tokens & Payments Policy.

If a Pay Now payment is reversed, refunded, or charged back, the platform fee originally collected on that payment is reversed or netted against your workspace accordingly; we do not retain a fee on funds that were not ultimately kept by the broker.

Repeated chargebacks, fraud, or abuse of Pay Now or BNPL may result in suspension of Pay Now for your workspace pending investigation, consistent with our Terms & Conditions.

We may update platform fee rates, supported BNPL providers, or this Policy. The current rate that applies to Pay Now is always shown in your workspace billing settings before you confirm a Pay Now setup change.

Questions about the platform fee, Pay Now, Stripe Connect, or BNPL: support@buddytms.com.