Third-Party Payment Gateway Fee FAQ

Fee applies starting July 3rd, 2024:

• Canada
• The United Kingdom
• The United States

Fee applies starting November 6th, 2024:

• Austria
• Belgium
• Bulgaria
• Croatia
• Cyprus
• Czech Republic
• Estonia
• Finland
• France
• Denmark
• Germany
• Greece
• Hungary
• Ireland
• Italy
• Latvia
• Lithuania
• Luxembourg
• Malta
• Netherlands
• Poland
• Portugal
• Romania
• Slovakia
• Slovenia
• Spain
• Sweden

We understand that any change to your business, especially when it comes to pricing, can be frustrating. First and foremost, we want to be clear that this fee is entirely optional, and only applies when you’re not using TCommerce. On TCommerce, not only can you avoid this fee, but you’ll benefit from our robust, proven suite of selling, accounting and payments tools that will help you sell more and save time.

That’s why we’ve been heavily investing in these tools that will help you grow with us on our platform. We built TCommerce specifically for education businesses and creators like you, to help you sell more and save time.

And we’re seeing it pay off for those who use it: Thinkific customers on TCommerce sell more, earn more, have increased conversions and larger transactions overall. Based on this customer success, we’re narrowing our development focus here. This means our product team can focus their time and efforts on continuously delivering innovative solutions to help you sell more, in less time.

And remember that you do still have a choice — we’re not removing access to third-party payment gateways for our customers on paid plans. We will continue to support connectivity to third-party payment solutions, like Stripe or PayPal, ensuring you always have a choice on the best setup for your business. Whatever you choose, we’re here to support you and get you set up for success.

However, if you still feel concerned about the fee, please reach out to us through your Admin Dashboard by following these instructions or email us directly at payments-support@thinkific.com! We will assess your specific situation and offer a pathway that would work in your situation.

Based on the data-back customer success that we’ve seen, we’re increasing our innovation and investment in TCommerce, and we’re looking to move our customers onto TCommerce, ultimately fueling your success.

We understand not all of our customers are ready to migrate to TCommerce today, so we’ll continue to offer access to third-party payment providers like Stripe and PayPal.

But TCommerce is where our customers thrive when it comes to increasing sales. So as an incentive to move our customers onto TCommerce, where you’ll benefit from increased product innovation and the proven customer success we’re seeing, all transactions processed on Stripe (and in the future, all third-party payment providers) will incur a fee as of July 3rd, 2024 (for creators in the US, Canada, and the UK) and as of November 6th, 2024 (for the EU countries).

By moving to TCommerce, you will avoid these fees and will benefit from proven selling tools that help our customers sell more, earn more and have larger transactions.

By moving to TCommerce, you will avoid these fees and will benefit from proven selling tools that help our customers sell more, earn more and have larger transactions.

No, you will not be charged a fee if you are not able to use TCommerce in your country. Currently, TCommerce is supported in the following countries: Thinkific Payments Supported Countries. We are continuously rolling out TCommerce in new countries, so when this becomes available to you, we will let you know and you will be given ample notice about any upcoming fees associated with third-party payment providers.

No, at this time, the third-party payment gateway fee will not apply to Plus customers.

We want to support your growth and grow with you. This fee will only apply to your first $1M in sales per calendar year — after that, we will waive the fee. Remember that the fee does not apply if you’re processing payments on TCommerce (Thinkific Payments).

As we are launching this fee halfway through 2024 on July 3, 2024 (for creators in the US, Canada, and the UK) and on November 6th, 2024 (for the EU countries), and remain in place until December 31, 2024, this sales cap will be prorated in 2024, For example, this means that if you are located in Canada and exceed $500,000 in sales (half of the $1M maximum) after July 3 but before December 31, 2024, we will stop charging the fee on the date that you exceed $500,000 in sales.

For 2025, the fee will begin again on January 1 and remain in place until December 31, or until you reach $1M in sales, and the same logic will apply in subsequent years.

We understand that you might have concerns, and we are here to help! Please reach out to us through your Admin Dashboard by following these instructions or email us directly at payments-support@thinkific.com. We will always work to find a solution that ensures you are set up for success on Thinkific.

Thinkific customers on TCommerce sell more. We built TCommerce specifically for creators and education businesses, to help you sell more, and spend less time doing it. We’ve seen the data: Thinkific creators on TCommerce earn more, have increased conversions and have larger transaction sizes overall.

Based on the customer success we’ve seen, we’re doubling down on our investment and innovation in TCommerce. Because TCommerce is the best way to grow your business on Thinkific, and customers who are not on TCommerce are going to miss out on our continued innovation here.

Success stats of TCommerce features:

• Customers on Thinkific Payments have seen up to 22% larger average transaction sizes.
• Gifting can boost transaction sizes by up to 6.2%.
• Customers who offer Buy Now, Pay Later payment methods (e.g. Affirm, Klarna, AfterPay) see higher transaction sizes and earn 7.5% more revenue on average
• Orders with an Order Bump have a 20% larger average transaction size
• Smart Retries help TCommerce customers to earn up to 30% more revenue

Additionally, you will avoid any third-party payment gateway fees if you’re using TCommerce.

We are always working to improve and enhance our in-house payments and selling solutions to help you sell more and spend less time doing it. 2024 will be no exception, as we have exciting plans to boost our investment, innovation and development efforts in building out TCommerce to help you grow your business on Thinkific.

We’re also always looking to hear your feedback and requests so that we can assess and prioritize what we build next to will help your business grow.

We understand that you might feel like we’re diverting resources away from our core product to focus on selling tools that may not be important to you; however, we have continued to add resources across our core business and will always be working to enhance all areas of our product. This year you’ll see a number of new features and functionalities across our product, both TCommerce and more broadly, to continue to fuel your success, including:

NON-TCOMMERCE FEATURES:

• AI Course Outline Generator
• AI Quiz Generator
• New and improved Landing Pages
• Toggle to Hide Financial Data from Site Admins
• Ability to Archive products
• Spotify Partnership Opportunity
• Refreshed Creator Home
• New Digital Downloads product
• New Live Events product - coming soon!

TCOMMERCE FEATURES:

• Gifting
• Group Orders
• Sync with QuickBooks
• Integration with Xero
• Payment webhooks
• Sales Tax Solution for UK & EU sales
• Branded checkout customization options
• Sales Tax resources and simplified student exemption process - coming soon!
• Multi-currency pricing - coming soon!
• More financial integrations
• Ongoing reporting & analytics improvements
   

In most countries, transaction fees on TCommerce are the same as Stripe, so when it comes to processing on Thinkific Payments, you’re not paying any more than you would on Stripe. See the details here: Thinkific Payments Supported Countries and Transaction Fees.

While there is a higher fee for transactions processed with Buy Now, Pay Later payment methods, Thinkific customers who offer Buy Now, Pay Later see higher transaction sizes, higher conversion rates, and earn 7.5% more revenue on average. So while there is a higher transaction fee with these payment methods, you'll see an increase in conversions and sales from a brand new audience with new buying power made possible with Buy Now, Pay Later.

The only other additional fee you would see would be a 0.5% fee on the US, Canadian, UK, and EU purchases, which is our Sales Tax and VAT Solution that we built with Stripe, which simplifies tax management for your US, Canadian, UK, and EU sales (where tax is applicable).

This means that for sales in the US and Canada, you would no longer need to track where each of your students is purchasing from, track what those provincial and state tax laws are for the tax threshold and type of digital product in the area they're located, and wouldn't need to register and remit your sales tax in those jurisdictions - saving your team plenty of manual hours (and the cost of a human manually monitoring your transactions) and ensuring your business is compliant. 

For sales in the UK and the EU, you can save your valuable time and energy on calculating and charging sales tax and VAT. We'll handle it all so you can get back to creating content and engaging your audience. 

If you are currently using a solution like Quaderno to manage your sales tax, this solution can help to remove the cost of that license from your business expenses.

Being fanatical about customer success is a Thinkific core value, and providing amazing customer support is something we are committed to. We want to ensure that anytime you have a question about TCommerce, you’ll have easy access to the answer you are looking for.

Our Help Center offers access to articles that will help answer any question you have about using Thinkific for your online business. By moving to TCommerce, you will also get priority support have can help you answer any questions, now with faster support times.

We are also actively working on plans to improve our support availability specific to TCommerce with a goal of offering more personalized and timely help when you need it.

We are not forcing paid customers to move over to TCommerce at this time. While we are excited about the proven value that TCommerce brings to creators like you, we also understand the value of having options, so that you can choose the solution that is the best fit for your business.

However, note that by staying on Stripe, Paypal, or any other third-party payment provider you will incur the third-party payment gateway fee.

Migrating to Thinkific Payments from Stripe is simple and only takes about 10 minutes. You just need to ensure you have some key information about your business, which you’ll need as part of the setup process. First, you’ll set up your Thinkific Payments account by following the instructions in this guide.

Your students' pre-existing subscriptions, payment plans, and billing cycles will automatically migrate to Thinkific Payments. All new transactions processed after the migration will be done through Thinkific Payments. This migration will occur 30–60 days after setting up your Thinkific Payments account and our team will notify you of the upcoming migration - you also have the option to opt out of this migration or delay the migration. You can find more details about this in our Thinkific Payments Migration Guide.

Your students' pre-existing subscriptions, payment plans, and billing cycles will automatically migrate to Thinkific Payments. All new transactions processed after the migration will be done through Thinkific Payments. This migration will occur 30–60 days after setting up your Thinkific Payments account and our team will notify you of the upcoming migration - you also have the option to opt out of this migration or delay the migration. You can find more details about this in our Thinkific Payments Migration Guide.

While we don’t offer migration services, the process to migrate to TPay only takes minutes! We have a guide on how to migrate to Thinkific Payments here, and you can always reach out if you have any questions along the way!

If you want to migrate back to Stripe, it’s as simple as us simply turning Thinkific Payments off for you, and can be accomplished by submitting a request to our support team. Once turned off, all net new transactions will automatically be processed via Stripe. Any existing subscriptions or payment plans will stay within Thinkific Payments until their completion.

Please email payments-support@thinkific.com for assistance. Note that once back on Stripe the fee would then apply to your transactions processed on Stripe (or any third-party payment gateway that is not TCommerce).

No. If you are on one of our legacy plans, you can enable TCommerce without upgrading. Get started by following the instructions here: Migrate to Thinkific Payments: A Step-by-Step Guide

As part of the ongoing commitment to delivering the best value to creators in all stages of their journey, as of July 3rd, 2024 (for creators in the US, Canada, and the UK) and as of November 6th, 2024 (for the EU countries), Thinkific Payments is the default and required payment processor to creators on Free plans. If you are on a Free plan and using Stripe, Paypal, or other Third Party Payment Gateways, you will need to migrate to Thinkific Payments: Thinkific Payments Migration Guide.

If you are on a Free plan and do not move to TCommerce by July 3rd, 2024 (for creators in the US, Canada, and the UK) and as of November 6th, 2024 (for the EU countries), you will no longer be able to accept payments from your students.