Signing up takes a few minutes. You need an email address you can access and the name of the business you are selling under.

What you need

An email address, a password, and the legal name of your business. If you are selling as an individual rather than a company, your own name is the legal name.

You do not need your bank details yet. Those are asked for when you set up payouts, and you can sell before that is done.

Setting it up

Go to the sign up page and enter your email. We send a code to confirm the address belongs to you. Enter it, choose a password, and the account exists.

The next screen asks about your business. You can skip it and come back, but nothing can be published until it is filled in.

What comes next

Three things stand between a new account and a first sale: your business profile, at least one payment method, and one product. Each has its own article and they can be done in any order.

Your business profile is what customers see at checkout and on receipts. It is also what we use to work out which rules apply to your account.

What customers see

Your business name appears on the checkout page, on receipts, and on your customers' card statements. Use the name people know you by rather than the name on the registration, if the two are different.

Your support email is shown on every receipt. Use one somebody reads.

What is for us

The country you operate from decides which payment methods you can offer and which tax rules apply. It cannot be changed later without support, so take a moment over it.

The business type, company or individual, decides what we need from you during verification.

Changing it later

The name, logo and support email can be changed at any time under Settings. Country and business type cannot.

Verification is a legal requirement for anyone taking payments, not a hurdle we invented. It is also the step that decides when payouts start.

What we ask for

For an individual: a government issued photo ID and proof of your address.

For a company: the same for the person signing up, plus a document showing the company exists and who controls it. [confirm]

While it is being checked

You can keep building and in most cases keep selling. What you cannot do is receive a payout until the check is complete. [confirm]

Checks usually complete within a day or two. If something is unclear we ask for one more document rather than rejecting the account. [confirm]

If something is wrong

The most common reason for a delay is a photo where part of the document is cut off or the light is bad. Take it flat, in daylight, with all four corners in the frame.

Both are changed under Settings, and both are treated as security events - we tell you when either changes, so an unexpected message is worth acting on.

Changing your email

Enter the new address and confirm it from a message we send there. The old address keeps working until the new one is confirmed, so a typo cannot lock you out.

Changing your password

Enter the current one and the new one. Being signed out elsewhere afterwards is deliberate: if the reason for changing it was that somebody else had it, this is the part that removes them.

If you cannot sign in

Use the reset link on the sign in page. If you no longer have the email address either, support can help, but expect to prove who you are first.

A customer who does not see the way they normally pay often does not look for another one. This is the single setting with the clearest effect on how many checkouts finish.

Cards

Visa and Mastercard work everywhere and should stay on. American Express is worth having if you sell to business customers, less so otherwise.

Wallets

Apple Pay and Google Pay remove the typing from checkout on a phone, which is where most people buy. If you sell anything to consumers, switch both on.

What each market expects

Card habits in Europe are not uniform. In the Netherlands, iDEAL is what people reach for. In Germany, many buyers expect to pay by bank transfer or on invoice. In Poland, BLIK. Look at where your customers actually are rather than switching on everything. [confirm]

Buy now, pay later

Instalments raise the number of completed checkouts on higher prices and are largely irrelevant below about twenty euro. Switch them on where the price is the thing people hesitate over.

Most declines come from the customer's own bank, not from us. We pass on the reason we are given, and it is often vaguer than anybody would like.

The usual causes

Not enough money on the card. A card that expired. A typed digit wrong. A bank blocking a payment to a business it has not seen before, which is common on the first purchase from a new seller.

What to tell the customer

Ask them to check the card details and try again. If it fails twice, ask them to try another card or another method. If it still fails, the answer is almost always with their bank, and only their bank can say why.

What not to do

Do not ask a customer to send card details by email or chat. There is no situation where that is the right fix, and a customer who has been asked once is a customer who can be asked by somebody else.

Repeated declines on a subscription

A renewal that fails is retried automatically over the following days. The customer is told each time. 

Money from a sale sits in your balance first and is paid out on a schedule, not instantly. The gap exists because refunds and disputes can arrive after the sale.

The schedule

Payouts run on a fixed rhythm once your account is verified and a bank account is on file. [confirm]

What delays one

Verification that has not finished. A bank account with a typo in it. A sudden jump in turnover, which triggers a review on any payments platform, including this one. 

Reading your balance

Available is what can be paid out. Pending is money from recent sales that has not settled yet. Both are shown separately so the second one is not mistaken for the first.

Payouts go to one account at a time. You can change it, and the change takes effect from the next payout rather than the one already in motion.

What we need

An IBAN and the name on the account. The name has to match the name on your yovo account - a payout to a differently named account is one of the few things a bank will simply refuse. 

Changing it

Add the new account, make it the payout account, then remove the old one. In that order, so there is never a moment with no account on file.

If a payout fails

It comes back to your balance and we tell you. The usual cause is a closed account or a mistyped IBAN. Fix the details and it goes out with the next run.

A product is the thing a customer pays for. It carries a price, a billing model, and whatever the customer gets.

The basics

Give it a name a customer would recognise on a receipt. Write a description that says what they get rather than why it is good - the checkout is past the point of persuasion.

Choosing the price

The currency is set per product and cannot be changed once there are sales against it, because that would rewrite history on existing receipts.

One time or recurring

One time is a single charge. Recurring charges on a rhythm until it is cancelled. Pick on how the thing is actually used: a course is usually one time, a community usually recurring.

Publishing

A published product has a checkout link you can put anywhere. Unpublished, it is only visible to you.

A subscription charges on a rhythm and keeps going until somebody stops it. Most of the work is in deciding the rhythm, not in setting it up.

Choosing an interval

Monthly is the default expectation for most things. Yearly brings the money forward and reduces cancellations, and the usual way to make it attractive is to charge for ten or eleven months rather than twelve.

What the customer sees

A clear statement at checkout of what they are agreeing to and when the next charge lands. In the EU this is not a courtesy, it is required, and the checkout handles it for you.

Renewals

Each renewal charges automatically and sends a receipt. A failed renewal is retried over the following days before the subscription is stopped.

Cancelling

A cancelled subscription normally runs to the end of the period already paid for. Ending it immediately is a refund decision, not a cancellation one.