Where your money goes
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GlassRelay is built by Vertyco LLC, which runs the Vertyco ARK community: 28 game servers and a Discord where people pay a few dollars a month for a supporter role. That ran on Upgrade.Chat for years. Where the money went was never the problem, since PayPal and Stripe paid us directly, but handing over a share of every single sale forever wore thin, and pulling our own payment records meant opening a support ticket. So we wrote this, and it runs our own community's paid roles today.
What happens when someone pays you
- A member opens your storefront link and pays.
- The money goes into your own PayPal or Stripe account, on whatever payout schedule you already have with them.
- Your payment provider tells GlassRelay the payment went through.
- The bot grants the Discord role (or your own system gets told, if you're on the API) and the payment is written down with the ID your provider gave it.
The money doesn't pass through us at any step in that list. We can't freeze a balance of yours or delay a payout, and we're not the seller either. Your member is paying you, and whatever PayPal or Stripe charge you per payment is between you and them, same as if you'd sent them an invoice by hand.
Why the numbers will match your PayPal balance
Amounts are stored exactly as your provider reports them. If PayPal says a payment was $4.99, the record says $4.99, and it carries PayPal's own transaction ID so you can look it up on their side. That was a rule from the first week, because the thing that drove us up the wall on other platforms was a dashboard total that didn't match the PayPal balance and no way to find out why. If a number on your dashboard ever disagrees with your PayPal or Stripe account, that's a bug and we want to hear about it.
Beyond keeping the records straight, the software grants and removes roles as payments succeed and subscriptions renew or lapse, hands the whole history to you as a CSV or over the REST API on any plan, and flags the things that need a person, like a renewal that failed.
What we charge
$0 platform fees. You pay a flat monthly price for the software itself, and the free tier costs nothing. Since we never touch a sale, the price doesn't go up when you have a good month. The plans list what each tier includes.
Things people ask
Do you need your own PayPal or Stripe account? Yes, that's where the money arrives. Both are free to open, and you connect them from the dashboard. You can have both on at once and let the member choose at checkout.
Who handles refunds? You do, from your own PayPal or Stripe account, and the refund gets recorded against the payment either way. If a one-time purchase is refunded in full, the role it bought is removed. Refunding one charge on a subscription doesn't cancel the subscription, though. If you want access to end, cancel the subscription itself.
What if you stop using GlassRelay? Nothing happens to your money, because it was never here. Your PayPal or Stripe account and your members stay yours, and you can export the whole history on the way out.
How can you check any of this? Take one real payment, then search your PayPal or Stripe dashboard for the transaction ID sitting next to it here. Charge yourself a dollar if you want to test it before you tell anyone your storefront is open.