Charge your customers automatically with Stripe

Help center 2026-08-15 6 min read

You bill your customers directly — RingReady never appears on their card statement, their invoice, or anywhere else. We bill you at wholesale; you charge your customers your retail price and keep the spread. This guide sets up the simplest version of that machine: a Stripe Payment Link that charges your customer's card automatically every month, so you never chase an invoice. About 15 minutes, no code, no developer.

1. How the billing works — two separate pipes

Keep this picture in your head and nothing else in this guide will confuse you: there are two completely separate billing pipes. Pipe one: RingReady bills you — $99/month platform fee plus each receptionist's flat subscription (Professional $39/month, Growth $129/month, Scale $299/month; unlimited minutes, no metering). Pipe two: you bill your customer whatever you decide, through your own Stripe account. We never see your customer's card, and they never see our name.

2. Create a free Stripe account

Go to stripe.com and sign up — the account is free; Stripe makes its money as a small cut of each charge. Have two things ready before you start:

  • Your legal business details — legal name and EIN if you've formed a company; if you're a sole proprietor, your own name and SSN work fine. Stripe needs this by law (it's the same identity check every payment company runs).
  • A bank account — where Stripe deposits your money. A personal checking account is fine to start; open a business account later for cleaner taxes.

Expect one quirk: your very first payout takes several days to about a week while Stripe verifies you. After that, payouts run on a regular ~2-business-day cycle. Normal — don't panic.

3. Create your product with a monthly price

In the Stripe dashboard sidebar: Product catalog → Add product.

  1. Name it with your brand: "AI Receptionist — [Your Brand]". That's the line your customer sees on their statement and receipts, so make it recognizably you.
  2. Set the price — say 200.00.
  3. This is the step people get wrong: choose Recurring → Monthly, not One-time. Recurring is what makes the card charge itself every month. One-time means you're back to chasing payments.
  4. Save.

Selling at more than one price point (a basic tier and a premium tier)? Make one product per price — two minutes each.

Sidebar: Payment Links → New. Pick the product you just created, click Create link, copy the URL. That URL is your entire checkout: a hosted, secure payment page with your product name on it. No website integration, no code — anyone who opens the link and enters a card is subscribed.

Reuse one link for every customer at that price, or create one link per customer if you like tracking who came from where. Either works; don't overthink it.

5. Send it — at the moment of "yes"

Text or email the link to a customer who's ready to buy. They open it, enter their card once, and Stripe charges them automatically on the same date every month — no invoices to send, no "just following up on payment" emails, ever. You'll see every subscriber under Billing → Subscriptions in your Stripe dashboard.

6. Failed payments: turn on Smart Retries

Cards expire and payments bounce — it's routine, not a crisis, and Stripe will handle almost all of it for you if you turn two settings on. In the Stripe dashboard, open Settings → Billing → Subscriptions and emails (Stripe calls the area "revenue recovery") and enable:

  • Smart Retries — Stripe automatically re-attempts the charge at the times it's most likely to succeed.
  • Customer emails for failed payments — Stripe emails your customer a secure link to update their card, without you lifting a finger.

Do this today, not after your first bounced payment. The whole point of automatic billing is that recovery is automatic too — most failed payments fix themselves within a few days once these are on.

7. Fees, and the alternatives

Stripe's cut is about 2.9% + 30¢ per charge. On a $200/month customer, that's roughly $6 — you keep about $194. Price with the fee in mind and it's a rounding error.

Alternatives, briefly: Square offers nearly identical recurring payment links and is a fine choice if you already use it; QuickBooks invoicing makes sense if your bookkeeping already lives there, though invoices lean on the customer to act each cycle unless you set up autopay. Any of them beats manual invoicing — pick one, set it up once, and move on to selling.

8. The margin math

The rule of thumb is simple because your cost side is flat: a receptionist costs you a fixed $39/month (Professional), and most partners charge $150–300/month. Charge $200 and you keep about $160 per customer per month, minus the ~$6 processing fee — every month, automatically, from a link you set up once. No usage fees on your side, no metering, so your margin doesn't shrink when your customer's call volume grows. Ten customers at that spread is roughly $1,600/month against one $99 platform fee.

Stuck? Email partner support at hello@ring-ready.com and we'll walk you through it.