***APRIL 2018 UPDATE: Payfully no longer caters to vacation rental and Airbnb hosts***
Payfully is a new app that enables Airbnb hosts receive their money in advance. When your guest books your Airbnb, he or she has to pay the total booking amount to Airbnb at the time of booking. Airbnb then holds the money until the day after the guest checks in, after which the money is paid to the host. During this period, Airbnb holds the cash.
As a host, you may wonder why you don’t get the money when the guest books, just like a hotel or B&B would. Seems fair right? The good news is, you actually can, thanks to a new startup named Payfully.
In this post I’ll explain in detail how Payfully works and how you can use it to receive your Airbnb payments shortly after receiving an Airbnb booking instead of at least 24 hours after check-out.
I’ll start with a short summary of how Payfully works.
How does Payfully work?
It’s very simple, go to Payfully and follow the following steps:
1. Simply create an account and link it to your Airbnb listing to see your future bookings and select the reservations you want to cash out in advance
2. Connect your bank account
3. Payfully transfers the funds to your bank account in 24 hours from the moment your request is approved
4. When Airbnb processes your payment (24 hours after your guests check-in) Payfully will automatically debit your bank account for the same amount minus the fee
I bet you have three questions in your mind now. Let me answer them for you.
How much does it cost?
They charge between $15 and $45 for every $500 they advance, depending on how far away your advance and how big the amount. However, you can try Payfully for FREE Simply sign-up for an account and when you request your first advance, apply code GPFYP. Payfully will pay you the full amount and not charge you a dime.
What if my guest cancels after I have received the funds?
No need to panic, they aren’t going to take the money back just yet. They give you 60 days to land another booking to cover the advance at no extra charge. If you don’t get any new bookings, they’ll work with you to reverse the transaction within a reasonable amount of time.
What if I cancel after I have received the funds?
If you are the one to cancel (which I strongly encourage you not to do as it hurts your Airbnb business significantly) they will automatically reverse the advance and charge your account for the same amount.
My thoughts
I think Payfully adds a very useful service for Airbnb hosts by allowing them to receive the money in advance. Hosts can use this money for personal expenses, but my recommendation would be for hosts to use the money to invest in their Airbnb listing and get more bookings as a result. This way the fee that Payfully charges could be easily made back.
Detailed review of Payfully
Awesome, so you got the idea of what Payfully is about. Now lets dive into more details and learn more about this service for Airbnb hosts.
How to sign-up up for Payfully
To sign-up for Payfully simply connect your Google account or use your email.
How to link your Airbnb listing to your Payfully account
The next step is to connect your Airbnb listing to your Payfully account. Simply enter your phone number, your Airbnb listing URL and your login details.
One potential complication arrises if you’ve created your Airbnb account using your Facebook, in which case you may not know your password. To solve this, simply request a new Airbnb password first.
How to get paid in advance for your Airbnb bookings
Now lets talk about the reason why you signed up for Payfully in the first place: because you want to get paid in advance. How does that work?
In your dashboard you’ll see two tabs: upcoming reservations and transaction history. If you’ve just signed up, the transaction history will be empty obviously.
On the upcoming reservations tab you’ll see all your upcoming Airbnb reservations. You can choose which of these reservations you want to payout in advance.
This is a neat feature, you can receive the payouts in advance for just the right number of your upcoming reservations to satisfy your current need for cash.
For each upcoming Airbnb booking you can see how long it will take to receive the payout if you wait until after the check-in date. You can also see exactly when Payfully would pay you, the fee that they will charge and what the total amount to be received is.
To go ahead and request the advance payment, simply press the red apply now button. Before the receive the money, Payfully has to approve your request first.
If the booking advance is approved before 11am (EST) on a weekday, you will receive the funds within 24 hours. Advances that are approved over the weekend will be processed the following Monday.
Payfully support
If you have any questions, you can check out the “how it works” section. This section isn’t very comprehensive though, so there’s a good chance you won’t find the answer to your question here.
If that’s the case, you can use the live chat support to get help. Well, it’s not exactly live all the time, just during US business hours. That makes sense though as the service is only available to US hosts.
To learn more about Payfully, watch the video below or visit their website.