Stripe PayTo in QuickBooks: How It Differs from BECS

Stripe PayTo lets an Australian customer approve a payment agreement in their banking app and have the money leave their account in real time. For a business that has been collecting by BECS Direct Debit, that changes more than checkout. It changes when a payment is final, what a failure costs, what a dispute costs, and how long you have to refund. Each of those lands somewhere in QuickBooks.

This guide works through Stripe PayTo for QuickBooks users, using Stripe's own current PayTo documentation and Australian pricing, and puts it side by side with BECS so you can decide which one your books are better off with.

Acodei syncs your Stripe activity into QuickBooks Online, including the refunds and disputes that arrive after the sale. Start a free trial.

What is Stripe PayTo?

Stripe PayTo is a real-time, account-to-account payment method for customers in Australia, in AUD, for one-time and recurring payments. The customer gives a PayID or a BSB and account number, their bank asks them to authorize a PayTo agreement (Stripe calls it a mandate), and Stripe typically reports the payment's final status within 60 seconds of that authorization.

That last point is the one that matters for bookkeeping. Stripe still classes PayTo as a delayed notification method, so the PaymentIntent passes through a processing state. But the delay is measured in seconds, not business days.

A few more properties from Stripe's PayTo documentation:

• Customer-initiated confirmation. The customer approves the agreement in their own banking app, usually after a push notification or email from their bank.
• Recurring payments and Stripe Billing are supported, as are Checkout, the Payment Element, Payment Links and Connect (direct, destination, and separate charges and transfers).
• No manual capture. You cannot authorize now and capture later.
• Payout timing is standard. PayTo funds follow your normal Stripe payout schedule. BECS, by contrast, lists its own 2-business-day timing.
• Extra verification. Stripe asks for additional identity verification before it switches PayTo on for your account.

Stripe PayTo vs BECS Direct Debit for QuickBooks users

Both methods pull AUD from an Australian bank account under a standing authority, and on Stripe's Australian pricing page both cost 1% + A$0.30 per successful payment, capped at A$3.50. That cap applies from A$320 upward, because 1% of A$320 plus A$0.30 is exactly A$3.50. So the fee on a successful payment is the same either way. Everything around it is not.

	PayTo	BECS Direct Debit
Who confirms the authority	The customer, in their banking app	The business collects a Direct Debit Request (DDR)
When you know the outcome	Usually within 60 seconds of authorization	Success at T+2, at 00:00 UTC; failure notice can take up to 3 business days
Payout timing	Standard Stripe payout timing	2 business days
Fee per successful payment	1% + A$0.30, A$3.50 cap	1% + A$0.30, A$3.50 cap
Failed payment fee	None listed	A$2.50
Dispute fee	A$25.00	A$2.50
Refund fee	A$0.50	None listed
Refund window	Up to 2 years after the payment	Within 90 days of the payment
Dispute window	Not stated on Stripe's PayTo page	Up to 7 years, no questions asked
Can you appeal a dispute?	No, disputes are final	No, disputes are final

Sources: Stripe's PayTo and BECS Direct Debit docs, and Stripe's Australian local payment method pricing, all read on 12 October 2026.

Read the table as a trade. PayTo moves the uncertainty to the front: a payment either succeeds in about a minute or it does not, and a failure costs you nothing on Stripe's price list. BECS moves it to the back: you wait two business days for the outcome, pay A$2.50 for each failure, but pay a tenth of PayTo's fee when a customer disputes.

For the full BECS picture, including its seven-year dispute tail and the Direct Debit Request, see our guide to Stripe BECS Direct Debit in QuickBooks.

PayTo agreements: what the mandate controls

A PayTo agreement is more specific than a BECS Direct Debit Request. The customer sees and approves the exact terms in their banking app, and Stripe lets you set them through mandate_options:

1. amount and amount_type. Either fixed, where every charge must equal the amount, or the default maximum, where each charge must be equal to or less than it.
2. payment_schedule. The cadence, such as monthly or annual. It defaults to adhoc.
3. payments_per_period. How many payments the agreement allows in each period.
4. start_date and end_date. The window in which you may collect.
5. purpose. Inferred from your merchant category code unless you override it.

For a one-off payment you set none of this. Stripe creates a single-use agreement for the payment's exact amount.

Two details catch businesses out. First, set an amount. Stripe warns that several banks always reject agreements without one, and its bank table shows ANZ, CBA, Westpac and Macquarie rejecting agreements over A$25,000 or with no maximum at all. Westpac also declines ad hoc payments over A$1,000 for high-risk merchants. Second, customers can pause or edit an agreement in their banking app, but Stripe does not support that. If a customer tries, Stripe cancels the agreement and sends a mandate.updated webhook, and you need a new agreement before you can collect again.

For the bookkeeper, a cancelled agreement looks like nothing at all. No failed payment appears, because nothing was attempted. The next subscription invoice simply does not collect. Our Stripe mandate glossary entry explains the object Stripe uses to track this, and an inactive PayTo mandate belongs on the month-end checklist next to failed payments.

Business accounts are the other limit. Stripe notes that PayTo coverage for business bank accounts is relatively low compared with consumer accounts, and that PayTo performs best for recurring payments and for payments under A$1,000. A B2B firm collecting A$8,000 retainers may find BECS is still the only bank debit most of its clients can use.

A worked example: one month of PayTo vs BECS

Take a Perth pilates studio. It bills 410 members A$189 a month on Friday 30 October 2026, and sells 60 ten-class packs at A$240 during October. Nine members have insufficient funds on the billing day.

Fees on the payments that succeed. A A$189 payment costs 1% of A$189 plus A$0.30, which is A$2.19. A A$240 pack costs A$2.70. Neither reaches the A$3.50 cap, and both methods charge the same:

• 401 memberships at A$189: A$75,789.00 in sales, A$878.19 in fees
• 60 packs at A$240: A$14,400.00 in sales, A$162.00 in fees
• Total: A$90,189.00 in sales, A$1,040.19 in fees, A$89,148.81 net

Under PayTo, the membership run settles on Friday 30 October. Each of the nine insufficient-funds payments fails within seconds, with Stripe's insufficient_funds decline code, and the PaymentIntent goes back to needing a payment method. No sale was made, no money moved, and Stripe's price list shows no fee for the failure. October's books show October's revenue, and the nine members are a collections task, not an accounting entry.

Under BECS, the same run is debited from customers on Friday 30 October but only succeeds at T+2, on Tuesday 3 November. The nine failures surface during that window, and each costs A$2.50, so A$22.50 of failure fees arrive with no sale attached. If your books record the October run in October, you have nine payments to reverse in November. If they record it when it succeeds, the whole run moves into November.

Then March. One member disputes a A$189 payment through their bank. Under PayTo, Stripe takes A$189 plus a A$25.00 dispute fee, A$214.00 in total. Under BECS it would be A$189 plus A$2.50, A$191.50. Either way the dispute is final.

And refunds. Two packs are refunded in December. Under PayTo, each refund carries a A$0.50 fee on Stripe's price list, so A$480.00 goes back plus A$1.00 in fees. A fee with no sale attached still needs an account in QuickBooks, or your ledger drifts from your Stripe balance by that dollar.

The pattern scales. PayTo is cheaper and cleaner for a business with many small failures and few disputes. BECS is cheaper for a business with frequent disputes, and for B2B customers whose banks do not yet offer PayTo on business accounts.

Recording Stripe PayTo payments in QuickBooks

The accounting for PayTo is simpler than for any other bank debit Stripe offers, because the gap between "payment created" and "payment final" is about a minute rather than days. There is no unsettled October run to carry across a month end, and a failed PayTo payment never becomes a sale you later have to reverse.

How a successful PayTo charge reaches QuickBooks with Acodei depends on your sync mode:

• Real-time sync. Each successful Stripe charge becomes a Sales Receipt by default, deposited into your Stripe holding account. If the charge pays a Stripe invoice that Acodei has already synced, it is recorded as a payment applied to that QuickBooks invoice instead.
• Daily summary. Charges are not recorded one by one. A payout's balance transactions are grouped by day and currency, and each day becomes one Sales Receipt, or one Refund Receipt if the day nets negative.
• Fees. By default, the Stripe fee is a negative line on the receipt, using your mapped Stripe fee product, so the receipt nets to what reached your Stripe balance. With fees recorded as an expense, the fee posts separately and the receipt stays gross.

For BECS, Acodei handles the multi-day wait in a specific way: when its daily scan finds a charge that is still pending, it creates an individual transaction for it, and if the payment later fails, the entry is reversed on the failure date and included as a line item on the daily balance summary. With PayTo, the multi-day pending window that BECS creates is gone.

If your QuickBooks home currency is not AUD, every PayTo payment is a foreign-currency transaction. Multicurrency Support in Acodei is turned on by the Acodei team, not in your own settings. Once it is on, QuickBooks keeps a separate customer record per currency, such as "Acme - AUD", by design. Our guide to Stripe multicurrency in QuickBooks covers the setup.

PayTo refunds and disputes in QuickBooks

Refunds. You can refund a PayTo payment, in full or in part, for up to two years after the original payment, and customers usually receive the money within minutes. Multiple partial refunds can add up to the original amount. One trap: for a payment made with a PayID, the refund can fail if the name in billing_details.name does not match the name on the customer's bank account, so a failed refund is worth checking before you assume it reached the customer.

Acodei records Stripe refunds to the Stripe refunds account you chose at setup, or, with multiple product mapping, to the account of the product that was refunded when it can be matched. If you refund after the money has already been paid out, our guide to refunding a Stripe payment after payout shows how the bank side lines up.

Disputes. When a customer disputes a PayTo payment, Stripe sends charge.dispute.created and charge.dispute.closed and deducts the amount and the A$25.00 fee from your balance. You cannot appeal. If you reach an agreement with the customer, they make a new payment, which is a new sale in your books rather than a reversal of the dispute.

In Stripe's balance-transaction model, a dispute is an adjustment. In Acodei you map adjustments once, under Balance Transaction Mapping on the Account Mapping page, to a product that points at either your refunds account or a separate expense account for disputes. Acodei then processes them in the daily balance summary or with the payout, depending on your settings. If Adjustments are not mapped yet, the payout that contains the dispute does not sync, and you resync the deposit once the mapping is in place. Our guide to Stripe balance transaction mapping walks through it.

Because a PayTo dispute cannot be won and costs A$25.00, a dedicated "Bank payment disputes" expense account is worth having. It keeps the losses out of your refunds line and gives you one number to compare with Stripe's dispute total. Our guide to Stripe chargeback accounting in QuickBooks covers the wider choices.

Should you move from BECS to PayTo?

Switch, or offer both, if most of these are true:

• Your customers are consumers with recurring payments under A$1,000, the conditions in which Stripe says PayTo performs best.
• You lose money and close time to BECS failures that surface days after billing.
• Your dispute rate is low, so a A$25.00 fee rarely applies.
• You want refunds available for longer than BECS's 90 days.

Stay on BECS if your customers are mostly businesses, if your payments run above the A$25,000 ceiling several large banks set on PayTo agreements, or if disputes are frequent enough that a tenfold dispute fee matters.

In QuickBooks, the switch changes very little structurally. The same holding account receives the deposits, fees are recorded the same way, and disputes still go through your adjustment mapping. What changes is timing: revenue lands in the month you billed it, and the column of BECS failure reversals at the start of each month shrinks.

Frequently asked questions

How long does a Stripe PayTo payment take?

Stripe typically sends the final status of a PayTo payment within 60 seconds of the customer authorizing the agreement. The payment passes briefly through a processing state and then succeeds or fails. The funds then follow your standard Stripe payout timing, unlike BECS, which succeeds at T+2.

How much does Stripe charge for PayTo in Australia?

Stripe's Australian pricing page lists PayTo at 1% + A$0.30 per payment, capped at A$3.50, plus A$25.00 for a disputed payment and A$0.50 for a refund. No failed-payment fee is listed. The per-payment price and cap are the same as BECS Direct Debit.

Can I win a PayTo dispute on Stripe?

No. Stripe states that all PayTo disputes are final and cannot be appealed. Stripe deducts the disputed amount and the A$25.00 fee from your balance. If the customer agrees to pay after all, they make a new payment, which you record as a new sale.

What happens if a customer pauses their PayTo agreement?

Stripe does not support pausing or modifying PayTo agreements from the customer's side. If the customer tries, Stripe cancels the agreement and sends a mandate.updated webhook. You need a new agreement before you can collect again, so future invoices will not collect until the customer re-authorizes.

Does PayTo work for business bank accounts?

Sometimes. Stripe notes that business bank account coverage for PayTo is relatively low compared with consumer accounts and will grow as more banks enable it. If most of your customers pay from business accounts, BECS Direct Debit may still be the more reliable bank debit option.

PayTo turns Australian bank payments into something your books can treat almost like a card sale: final in a minute, no failure fees, and refunds open for two years. Acodei records your PayTo sales in QuickBooks, posts refunds and disputes where your mapping sends them, and keeps the Stripe fee on its own line. Start a free trial.