Rung 5 of 12
Getting Paid
The distance between "person with a website" and "business" is one working payment link. Not a shopping cart, not a "payments strategy" — a link you can text to a customer that puts money in your bank account two days later.
What you don't need
You don't need a merchant account, a meeting at a bank, an LLC first (in most cases), a point-of-sale system, or anyone's "commerce plan." That entire layer of ceremony was real twenty years ago and is now sales theater. Stripe and Square exist precisely so that a person with a bank account can take cards this afternoon.
What the fee actually means
Card processing costs 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction, and it's worth doing the arithmetic once so the number stops being abstract:
| You charge | Fee | You keep |
|---|---|---|
| $20 | $0.88 | $19.12 |
| $50 | $1.75 | $48.25 |
| $200 | $6.10 | $193.90 |
About 3%. That's the honest cost of "we take cards." Compare: platforms that take 20% of revenue forever as the price of using their builder. The difference between a processing fee and a landlord is the entire reason this rung insists the Stripe account is yours.
The setup, demystified
Stripe signup asks real questions — legal name, address, bank account, what you sell — because it's moving actual money and the law requires knowing who you are. Answer plainly; "sole proprietor" is a fine answer and most members are one. Fifteen minutes, and the scary-sounding parts are just forms.
The payment link
Inside Stripe: create a payment link — name the thing, set the price, get a URL. That URL is a complete checkout: card form, receipt, deposit to your bank. Text it, email it, put it behind the button on your one-page site. Test mode lets you rehearse the whole flow with a fake card before anything is real.
Who works this rung · with membership, $9.99/mo
- The Money Agent: gets you paid and keeps count.
The Money Agent walks the Stripe signup with you question by question (including the "what do I put here" moments the forms don't explain), then builds your first payment link, runs a test-mode dry run with you, and wires the link to the button on your site.
not live yet Today, this free lesson is how you do this rung on your own. The agent comes with membership. What's live today →
The milestone — checkable, not a vibe
A live payment link, in a Stripe (or Square) account in your own name, that has moved at least one real test transaction end-to-end — and you can state what the fee on a $50 sale is without looking it up.
Everything on this page is free to use on your own. The membership is five agents doing it with you, working from one set of notes about your business, plus a milestone review before you climb. $9.99 a month, cancel anytime — and we expect you to.