Monthly Payment Gateway

This article reviews the Monthly Payment Gateway. It goes over who is eligible to use the Monthly Payment Gateway, how to set up and manage the gateway, how to receive your payouts, and breaks down associated fees.

Overview

The Monthly Payment Gateway is one of Teachable’s native payment gateways. Payment gateways allow you to accept student payments for your products, and then receive payouts for your earnings from those sales.

Features of the Monthly Payment Gateway include:

• Eligibility for BackOffice services, which includes features such as automatic author and affiliate payouts, automatic author and affiliate tax form collection, and PayPal as a student payment option. Learn more about Teachable’s BackOffice services.
• Automatic handling/remittance of US sales tax, EU/UK VAT tax, and other digital content taxes outside of the US/EU, when applicable.
• Notification of potential fraud warnings, to help prevent chargebacks and fraudulent student purchases.
• Payouts directly to your PayPal account on the first business day of each month.

Eligibility

Teachable offers two native payment gateway options—teachable:pay and the Monthly Payment Gateway.

Schools that are located in certain countries are eligible to set up teachable:pay. For a full list of these countries, check out the teachable:pay article.

Schools that are unable to set up teachable:pay are eligible for the Monthly Payment Gateway.

Setup and management

Only Primary Owners can set up or edit payment gateway details.

To set up the Monthly Payment Gateway:

1. Navigate to your Settings > Payments page.
2. From the dropdown menu, select which country you’re located in.
   1. If you select a country that is eligible for teachable:pay, you will automatically start the setup process for teachable:pay. Learn more about eligibility and setup for teachable:pay.
   2. If you have selected a country that is not eligible for teachable:pay, you will continue with the setup process for Monthly Payment Gateway.
3. Enter in a PayPal account email address. This is where Teachable will send your earnings—you must have a valid PayPal account to receive payouts through the Monthly Payment Gateway. (If you do not have a PayPal account, sign up for one directly through their website.)
4. Fill out the rest of the prompts accordingly:
   1. Tax filing status - Select individual or business.
   2. Annual sales - Enter in the amount you/your business made in annual sales last year. This information helps us understand the kinds of users and businesses that are using Teachable.
   3. BackOffice - To enable BackOffice, select Enable BackOffice. To keep BackOffice disabled, select Skip. (Learn more about BackOffice).
      1. If enabled, you will be given the option to enable PayPal as a payment option for your students on the next screen.
   4. Course details - From the dropdown menus, enter in information about your course topics and price ranges. This information helps us to understand what kinds of courses users are creating on Teachable.
5. On the last screen, click Confirm payment settings to finalize the setup of the Monthly Payment Gateway.

Once you set up the Monthly Payment Gateway, you can edit the following details at any time from the Settings > Payments page:

• PayPal email address - The PayPal account you receive payouts to.
• BackOffice - Enable or disable BackOffice at any time. (Changing this setting only applies to future sales—any sales that have already been made are processed under the BackOffice setting that was set at time of sale).
• PayPal - Enable or disable PayPal as a payment option for your students. (This setting is only available if you have BackOffice enabled. For more information on student payment options, check out the Get Started with Payments article.)

Payouts

Sales made on the Monthly Payment Gateway are paid out to the school owner’s PayPal account on a monthly basis. (Primary Owners can edit the PayPal email address on file from the Settings > Payments menu). Payouts are sent to PayPal in USD.

To account for student refunds, Teachable pays school owners in USD on the first US business day of every month by 10pm UTC (5pm US EST). Weekends and US holidays do not count as US business days.

For example, if you make a sale in January, you would receive those funds from Teachable on March 1st. Then, on April 1st, you'll be paid for sales made in February, and so on. To understand when you will receive payouts for sales, refer to the following chart:

Sale made in:	Payout will be sent:
January	First business day of March
February	First business day of April
March	First business day of May
April	First business day of June
May	First business day of July
June	First business day of August
July	First business day of September
August	First business day of October
September	First business day of November
October	First business day of December
November	First business day of January
December	First business day of February

 

Authors and affiliates

If you have enabled BackOffice, Teachable will distribute any author and affiliate earnings on the same payout schedule outlined above. Author and affiliate payouts are also made via PayPal.

If you have disabled BackOffice, the school owner is responsible for paying out authors and affiliates directly (i.e., off of the Teachable platform). You can still use the reporting available through your Sales > Transactions menu to track how much is owed to each author/affiliate.

Fees

Each transaction processed by the Monthly Payment Gateway is subject to Teachable transaction fees, processing fees, and an optional BackOffice fee.

Teachable transaction fees

Teachable transaction fees vary by Teachable plan level. The transaction fee percentage is calculated on the total transaction earnings (amount charged before taxes) minus credit card/PayPal processing fees.

Teachable transaction fees for the Monthly Payment Gateway are as follows:

Free plan	Basic plan	Pro plan	Business plan
10% + $1 fixed fee	5%	0%	0%

 

BackOffice fees

BackOffice fees are an optional fee on all transactions for BackOffice services while enabled. The BackOffice fee percentage is calculated on the total transaction earnings (amount charged before taxes) minus processing fees.

Learn more about BackOffice.

Processing fees

Processing fees are calculated based on the total amount charged to the student.

Processing fees are the same across all plan levels, but vary depending on student payment method. Processing fees are as follows:

Payment method/type	Fee
US card fee	2.9% + 30¢
US PayPal fee	3.49% + 49¢
International card fee	3.9% + 30¢
International PayPal fee	4.99% + 49¢

Frequently asked questions & troubleshooting

Why have I not received my payout yet?

On the Monthly Payment Gateway, Teachable distributes payouts on the 1st of each month—unless that falls on a weekend or US holiday. Earnings are sent to the PayPal account you have on file in your Settings > Payments menu. (If you are an author or affiliate, you can set your PayPal email in the Payout Details tab of your author or affiliate dashboard).

Due to Teachable’s 30-day refund policy for courses, Teachable must hold funds for at least 30 days before releasing them to you. For example, on March 1st, you would receive a payment for all course purchases that took place in January. Then, on April 1st, you'd be paid for purchases made in February, and so on. You can view a complete breakdown of payouts schedule in the Payouts section above.

Additionally, payouts will not be sent if you have earned over $500 on the Teachable platform and have not yet submitted a tax form. If you have multiple accounts on Teachable (i.e., you are a Primary Owner in one school, and an author/affiliate in another) you will need to make sure you have a tax form on file for each account. Learn more about submitting your tax form(s).

Why is the payout amount I received different than expected?

When you get a payout for your earnings, we advise reviewing your earnings statement to understand the breakdown of your earnings.

For users on the Monthly Payment Gateway, we recommend using your earnings statements, which are available from the Sales > Statements tab. Earnings statements are available 20 days after the end of the month—meaning that your earnings statement for September sales would be available on October 20th. Then, you would be paid out for your September earnings on the first business day of November (according to the Monthly Payment Gateway payout schedule). Your earnings statement information can help you understand the amount you’ll receive before the payout is sent.

I turned on BackOffice and enabled PayPal as a payment option—why is PayPal still not showing up as a payment option on my checkout page(s)?

In order to enable PayPal, ensure that you’ve enabled BackOffice and then turned on PayPal as a payment option in your Settings > Payments menu.

Once you have enabled PayPal Payments through BackOffice, no further action items are required for PayPal to display as a payment option at checkout.

There are cases where PayPal will not be available as a payment option for students on Teachable's native payment gateways, even with BackOffice enabled. These specific instances are as follows:

- Currencies outside the United States (PayPal is only available in USD at this time)
- Recurring payments (subscriptions and payment plans) where a coupon that applies to only the first payment is applied at checkout

- Recurring payments (subscriptions and payment plans) where an order bump is applied at checkout

Read more about PayPal and other payment options for your students.

Additional resources

The following Knowledge Base articles/sections have additional information regarding payments on Teachable:

• Get Started with Payments - Read an overview about accepting and receiving payments on Teachable—includes information on your payment gateway options and student payment options
• Product Pricing Plans - Learn how to price your individual courses, coaching products, and bundles
• Chargebacks - Learn about what happens if a student initiates a chargeback on any purchase made in your school
• Taxes - Review all of our documentation on taxes, which includes information about when taxes are applied to student purchases and how Teachable handles tax remittance
• Student Refunds - Learn about Teachable’s refund policies for students, and how to issue refunds for student purchases