Using Stripe for Your Gym: A Practical Guide for NZ Owners

Stripe is the payment infrastructure that most modern NZ businesses — gyms included — use for card billing. If you're moving away from bank transfers and cash, Stripe is almost certainly where you should land. Here's a practical guide for gym owners.

What Stripe actually does

Stripe processes card payments, manages recurring subscriptions, handles retries on failed payments, and pays out to your NZ bank account on a regular schedule. It's not a gym-specific product — it's the underlying payment infrastructure that gym-specific products (like Latch) are built on top of.

Stripe fees for NZ businesses

Stripe's standard NZ rate is 1.7% + 30 cents per successful card transaction for NZ-issued cards. For overseas cards (Visa/MC), it's 2.9% + 30 cents. There are no monthly fees on the standard plan — you only pay per transaction.

On a $100/month membership: a NZ card costs $1.70 + $0.30 = $2.00 in Stripe fees. That's 2% effective rate. For a 40-member gym at $100/month ($4,000 MRR), Stripe fees are approximately $80/month.

Setting up recurring billing

Stripe's subscription product lets you define a recurring billing plan — say $120/month — and attach members to it. When a member subscribes, Stripe charges their card on the same date each month, retries if the payment fails, and sends you a webhook event with the outcome. You can manage everything from the Stripe dashboard.

If you use Latch, all of this is handled for you — you set your membership price in the Latch dashboard, and Stripe runs the billing automatically in the background. Latch adds a small platform fee on top of Stripe's rates.

Failed payments

When a card fails, Stripe automatically retries it 3–4 times over 7 days using Smart Retries (it picks the optimal retry time based on bank data). Members receive automated emails prompting them to update their card. You can see all failed payments in the Stripe dashboard.

Payouts to your NZ bank

Stripe pays out to your NZ bank account on a rolling 2-business-day schedule by default. So if a member pays on Monday, you typically receive the money (minus Stripe fees) by Wednesday. You can view payout schedules and history in the Stripe dashboard.

Is Stripe safe for gym members?

Yes. Stripe is PCI DSS Level 1 certified — the highest level of payment security. Card details are never stored on your gym's systems; they're held and managed by Stripe. Stripe also handles 3D Secure authentication where required by the member's bank.

Stripe vs direct debit for gyms

Stripe card billing has slightly higher fees than direct debit (1.7% vs ~1.0–1.5% for direct debit services), but provides instant payment confirmation — which is essential if you want to automate access control. For gyms that gate door access based on payment status, card payments are the right choice.