Driver Manual, Part 1 · Chapter 3: Connecting Stripe and Going Live

Until your payments are set up, your operator console shows a red banner on every tab:

Payment setup required. Connect your Stripe account to start collecting payments from riders.

Next to it is a button that says Connect Stripe. That banner is not a nag for the sake of it. It is telling you the one true thing standing between your page and your first paycheck. Tap Connect Stripe.

Stripe is the company that moves the money. It is the same payment system real businesses use everywhere. SOLODRIVE.PRO does not hold your earnings and hand them to you. When a rider pays, the money runs through your own Stripe account and out to your own bank. Connecting Stripe is how you tell the system where your money goes.

That is also why there is a setup step at all. To pay you, Stripe has to confirm who you are and where to send the money. There is no way around that, for you or for any business that takes a card. The good news is you do it once.

When you tap Connect Stripe, Stripe's own secure setup opens. You are now on Stripe's screens, not ours, and that is on purpose: your identity and bank details go straight to Stripe, not through us.

Stripe will ask you for the basics it needs to pay a person in the United States:

• Who you are, to confirm your identity.
• The bank account where you want your money to land.
• A few details about your driving as your business.

Fill it in honestly and completely. Have your bank account details handy before you start so you do not have to stop halfway. When you finish, Stripe sends you back to your operator console.

Here is the part nobody tells you, and it is the one that trips drivers up.

Getting sent back to your console does not always mean you are done. Stripe sometimes needs a little more before it will let you take real card payments. If you land back and the "Payment setup required" banner is still there, now reading that your connection is incomplete, that means Stripe is still waiting on something. Tap Connect Stripe again and finish what it asks for.

You are truly live when two things are true at once: Stripe can charge cards for you, and it has cleared you to do it. When that happens, the banner disappears. That is your green light. No banner means you are on.

If the banner is gone, your page can take a real, paid ride. If the banner is there, you are not live yet, no matter how far you got. Trust the banner, not your memory of how many screens you filled in.

Once the banner is gone, everything you set up in Chapter 2 goes to work. A rider can open your page at your handle, ask you for a ride, get your price, and pay by card. The money runs through your Stripe account to your bank.

Every plan, including Free, goes live this same way. Connecting Stripe is about getting paid, not about which plan you are on. Free drivers connect Stripe too.

That is Part 1: your page is live and it can take a real, paid ride. The next job is getting riders onto it, because a live page nobody has the link to is a store with the lights on and the door still locked.