Every operator knows the failure mode. A group takes a date, one person puts down a deposit, and then spends two weeks chasing eleven friends for their share. Half pay. The organizer goes quiet. The day collapses on the Wednesday before, and the slot that could have been sold twice over is now empty.
That is not a payments problem in the ordinary sense. It is a problem of who is responsible for the money — and the answer, in the way charter usually works, is one amateur with a group chat. SplitClub takes that job away from them, and away from you.
How the money moves
| Place by place | Every guest pays their own Activity Contribution directly to the club. Nobody fronts the boat, and nobody is owed money by their friends. |
|---|---|
| Held, not taken | A contribution is held the moment a guest commits. It is not captured, and it is not yours or ours to spend, until the day is fully funded. |
| Funded, then confirmed | You only ever hear about a day that has reached full funding. The deck is paid for before it is confirmed to you. |
| Not filled, not charged | A day that does not fill is not charged at all. The holds expire on their own. There is no refund queue, because there was never a payment. |
| Paid on a limited card | Where we pay suppliers on the group's behalf, it goes on a single-use card with a fixed ceiling. One card, one day, one limit — it cannot be reused or overspent. |
| Paid after it runs | Your payout is released automatically once the day is marked complete. Not on invoice, not on terms, not on a monthly cycle. |
| Paid into your own account | Payouts settle to your own operator account, in every country our payment processor supports. |
What you keep
One hundred percent.
There is no commission on an operator payout today. The day's agreed worth is what lands in your account. We are not taking a cut on the way past, and there is no broker margin sitting between the club and your fleet.
If that ever changes, it will be written into your operator agreement before it applies to a single day. We are not going to adjust a rate quietly and let you find it in a statement.
What you never have to do
- Raise an invoice. The completed day releases the payout. There is nothing to send us and nothing to follow up.
- Chase a deposit. By the time a day reaches you it is fully funded. There is no balance outstanding on the morning of the charter.
- Hold a stranger's card. You are not the merchant of record for a guest's contribution — the club is. You take no card details, store none, and carry none of that obligation.
- Argue with a guest about money. Billing questions come to us. Your relationship with the group starts at the pontoon.
- Wait on a payout schedule. Release is tied to the day running, not to a marketplace's calendar.
Guests outside the United States
SplitClub is built to travel, so the payment side has to work for a guest whose bank has never heard of us. It does:
- Cards issued in virtually every country are accepted, along with Apple Pay and Google Pay.
- The extra bank verification step European cards demand is handled properly. A French or Spanish guest's card completes rather than silently failing — which is where most cross-border charter payments actually die.
- Contributions are charged in US dollars today. We would rather say that plainly than let a guest discover it at the moment they pay. Local-currency pricing is work we have scoped and not yet shipped.
The practical effect for you: a guest in Madrid, London or São Paulo can fund a place on your boat this afternoon, and the funding of your day never depends on where a guest's bank happens to be.
What we are not claiming yet
We publish the limits for the same reason we publish the city statuses — an operator weighing a contract deserves the real picture, and a page that only lists strengths is not worth reading.
- We do not yet price in local currency, and we do not offer local bank-transfer methods such as SEPA, iDEAL, Pix or boleto.
- Days are on the calendar in Miami today. Every other harbor on the operator map is live and contracting the operators who will carry its calendar.
Talking to us about a contract
The payment terms above are the standing ones and they are the same in every harbor. If you run a charter business and want the specifics for your fleet — how a day is priced, what your worth is set at, and when the first funded day would reach you — the operator inquiry form is the door.
Three fields are required, and we reply to every inquiry from a real operator. Write to business@splitclubapp.com if you would rather start with an email.