Stripe Connect — Sell Courses (Payments)

Plan availability (2026-07-23): e-commerce requires the Starter plan or higher. On the Free plan the Payments and Coupons tabs are locked with an upgrade prompt, and public checkout is disabled; order and revenue history from any earlier selling stays visible.

Who this guide is for: E-commerce Admins and Owners who want to sell courses to the public through EmbayLMS. Connecting Stripe is the first step of the buy-loop — it is required before you can price a course for sale or take a payment.

This is NOT your EmbayLMS subscription. Two different Stripe relationships exist:

• Your EmbayLMS bill (what Embay charges you) is managed under Billing — you don’t need Stripe Connect for that.
• Selling courses (what your learners pay you) uses Stripe Connect, described here. The money goes to your Stripe account; EmbayLMS never holds it.

What connecting does

EmbayLMS uses Stripe Connect with Standard accounts. That means:

• You connect (or create) your own Stripe account. You keep full ownership: your Stripe Dashboard, your payouts, your disputes, your reporting, your tax settings.
• When a learner buys a course, the charge is created on your connected account. EmbayLMS applies a small platform fee (see Platform fees) and the remainder settles to you on your normal Stripe payout schedule.
• Card details are entered only on Stripe’s hosted pages — EmbayLMS never sees or stores card numbers.

Before you start

Connect your Stripe account

1. Go to E-commerce → Payments.
2. Click Connect Stripe. You are redirected to Stripe’s hosted onboarding.
3. Sign in to your existing Stripe account, or create a new one.
4. Complete Stripe’s forms (business profile, bank account, identity verification).
5. When you finish, Stripe returns you to the Payments tab. EmbayLMS pulls your latest status automatically and shows where you stand.

If you step away partway through, your progress is saved. Return to the Payments tab and click Continue on Stripe to pick up where you left off.

Reading your status

The Payments tab shows three capability flags, mirrored live from Stripe:

You are ready to accept payments when the Payments flag is Enabled. Stripe sometimes enables charges before payouts (or vice-versa) while it finishes reviewing your account — that’s normal and resolves on Stripe’s side.

Click Refresh status any time to re-pull the latest state from Stripe. EmbayLMS also updates automatically in the background whenever Stripe reports a change.

Platform fees

EmbayLMS adds an application fee to each sale. The fee is a percentage of the sale after discounts and before tax. It is deducted automatically at charge time and you receive the remainder. Your Stripe Dashboard shows both the gross charge and the application fee on every payment.

Who sets the rate. Embay sets it. Your plan comes with a standard rate, and a different rate can be agreed with Embay as part of your agreement. Nobody in your organization can change it in EmbayLMS.

Where to see your rate. People with access to Billing see the current rate on the Billing page, under Platform fee on course sales. The line appears only when your plan includes selling.

When a rate changes. A new rate applies to sales made after the change. Orders already paid keep the fee they were charged.

Disconnecting

On the Payments tab, click Disconnect to remove the link between EmbayLMS and your Stripe account.

• Disconnecting stops new sales through EmbayLMS immediately.
• It does not close, delete, or affect your Stripe account — that account is yours. Past payouts, disputes, and history remain in your Stripe Dashboard.
• You can reconnect later; you’ll start a fresh connection from the Connect Stripe button.

You can also revoke EmbayLMS from your Stripe Dashboard (Settings → Connected apps). If you do, EmbayLMS is notified and drops the link on its side automatically.

Collecting sales tax (GST/HST/QST/PST)

The Sales tax card on the Payments tab (LMS-316) has three modes:

Registration numbers

Enter your GST/HST and (if applicable) QST registration numbers. They are printed on every learner receipt (My purchases), which is what the CRA and Revenu Québec require on a tax invoice. The admin order record shows the tax amount and its breakdown, not the numbers.

Manual rate table

1. Choose Manual rates. The table lists every province and territory with today’s rates.
2. Edit a rate directly, or click Schedule a change to add a new Effective from date — the previous rate keeps applying to sales before that date.
3. Save. Every change is audit-logged (tax_config_updated, before/after).

Each component is rounded to the cent on its own and the receipt lists them separately; the platform fee is computed on your net (pre-tax) amount — tax is remitted, not revenue. Revenue → Tax collected by jurisdiction totals what you collected per province and tax.

Switching to manual mode does not touch orders already placed under Stripe Tax.

Refunds

Refund a sale (in full or in part) from E-commerce → Orders → open the order → Issue refund. The refund is processed on your connected account and returns the platform fee proportionally. A full refund also revokes the buyer’s access to the course. Refunds and chargebacks are reflected on the order status automatically. On Revenue, the Platform fee figure is what Embay kept: fees returned to you by refunds are subtracted.

Configuration reference

Troubleshooting

Related

• Course pricing — set a price on a course under the course editor’s Pricing tab.
• Coupons — create discount codes under E-commerce → Coupons.
• In-app Integrations menu