How an upfront charge and a refund differ from a wallet

A wallet lets you hold money and spend it later. A stored value product sells credits you can redeem. A money transmitter takes funds from one person and sends them to another. Miss and Pay does none of those. You pay one card charge for a contract. The charge is a deposit for that contract. Days you complete are refunded to the same card. Days you miss are retained as the fee for the broken day. You cannot spend the deposit inside Miss and Pay. There is no balance, no transfer to a friend, and no second person receiving the money.

Stripe's restricted businesses list, updated 22 September 2026, prohibits gambling, including games of chance and games of skill that pay a monetary prize, entry fees that promise a prize, and lotteries. It also restricts money transmitters and the sale of stored value or credits, including gift cards and products that store monetary value in the item. Miss and Pay is built to stay outside those categories. There is no prize, no pool, and no credit you can redeem. The public list is at stripe.com/legal/restricted-businesses.

The payment is a Stripe Checkout session in payment mode. The amount is set with price_data on that session, not a pre made Price object. The product name is Miss and Pay deposit. The description says the deposit is refundable for each day you complete. The coach, if you buy it, is a different Checkout charge of $19. That fee is for the notes and the task changes. It is not added to the deposit and it is not refunded with the deposit.

At the end, or when you close early, Miss and Pay calls the refunds API once on the original PaymentIntent. The amount is the kept days plus any days that were not yet due. Forfeited days are left out. Stripe's refunds documentation says you can refund part of a charge by passing an amount, that you cannot refund more than the original charge, and that the refund goes back to the original payment method. It also says Stripe's processing fees from the original transaction are not returned. That cost sits with the business. You are refunded the kept days in full.

The same page says a customer often sees the credit in about 5 to 10 business days, and that a refund issued shortly after the charge can appear as a reversal, where the original charge drops off the statement instead of showing as a separate credit. Miss and Pay caps contracts at 7, 14, or 30 days so the refund is requested while the charge is recent. The refunds page does not publish a single deadline for every card, so Miss and Pay does not invent one.

If you want the contrast in one line: a wallet is money you still hold. A refund is money sent back because the service for that day was completed. Miss and Pay never holds a spendable balance for you.