Bring Your Own Stripe: Keep 100% of Your Sales

Independent retail runs on thin margins, and platform fees quietly eat into them — a percentage of every sale on top of the card processing you already pay. Running payments on your own Stripe account changes that math: payouts land in your bank, and the platform takes no cut of the sale itself. This is how “bring your own Stripe” works and why it is one of the most direct ways to protect your margin.

What does “bring your own Stripe” mean?

It means Retailer OS connects to a Stripe account you own rather than processing payments through the platform and passing you the remainder. You paste your Stripe keys once; online checkout and in-store card payments both run off those credentials, and Stripe pays out to your bank on its normal schedule. Retailer OS never holds the funds, which also means there is no platform sitting between you and your money.

Where does this save you money?

The savings come from what you do not pay, plus control over what you do:

• No platform fee on transactions — you keep 100% of the sale; Stripe bills its processing fees directly, and nobody adds a markup on top.
• One Stripe for online and in-store — a single reconciliation surface instead of two systems to square up.
• In-store card payments via a Stripe Terminal reader (tap, swipe, insert) when you want them.
• An optional card-fee passthrough at the register, toggled per sale, so you can recover processing costs where it makes sense.

Is it complicated to set up?

No. You connect Stripe once from settings; the keys are verified and stored encrypted, and both online checkout and Terminal run off them from there. Customer accounts, store credit, and loyalty redemption sit on top, so the register handles real-world tenders without extra tools, and your online store uses the same account so the two reconcile together.

How does this fit the bigger picture?

Owning your payments is one piece of owning your stack. When the platform takes no cut, and your catalog, inventory, and customers all live in one connected system, the money you make is the money you keep. Transparent, add-what-you-need pricing follows the same logic — you can see exactly what you pay on the pricing page, with no percentage of sales hidden in it.