Charging entry fees
Add an entrance fee to a tournament, collect card payments through your wallet, and handle refunds when plans change.
1. Overview
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Watch: adding an entry fee
An entrance fee is set per tournament, when you create it. You choose the amount, and — if your wallet is connected — whether players pay by card in the app. With card payments on, a player's spot is only confirmed once they have paid, so you never chase money on game day.
You can also charge a fee without card payments: the fee is shown to players on the tournament page, but you collect it yourself (for example in cash at the court).
Collecting card payments requires an active wallet — see the Connecting your wallet guide. Without one, the card payments option doesn't appear and players see that the organizer hasn't finished setting up payments.
2. Enabling the fee
Open the tournament create form.
Entry fees are configured while creating the tournament, in the details side of the form (see the Creating a tournament guide for the rest of the form).
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Turn on Entrance fee.
If your wallet is active, this also turns on card payments automatically — you can still toggle “Receive payments from participants” off if you'd rather collect the fee yourself.
Set the amount.
Enter the total each player pays (at least 1). The currency is fixed to your wallet's currency — it's set by the country you chose when connecting your wallet.
Review the breakdown.
With card payments on, the form shows the Total sum players pay, the part you receive, and the Padel Fast service fee that is deducted from each payment, including the current percentage.
Create the tournament.
From now on, joining players are asked to pay. The fee is also shown in your tournaments table on the dashboard.
Payment settings are locked once the tournament is created — you can't change the fee amount or turn card payments on or off afterwards. If you need a different fee, create a new tournament.
3. How players pay
Players see a “Pay to join” button instead of the normal join button, and pay by card (or Apple Pay / Google Pay where available) in a secure Stripe checkout. The full player experience is covered in the Paying for a tournament guide.
- Without organizer approval — players pay at the moment they join; payment confirms their spot.
- With organizer approval — players request to join first and pay after you approve them, so approve promptly to get paid sooner.
If you enabled VAT in your wallet's tax settings, the tax is calculated and shown to players at checkout and on their receipts automatically.
4. Tracking payments
Every entry fee paid to you appears in your wallet: open the dashboard and choose Wallet under Payments. The Payments card lists who paid, when and how much, and the revenue card sums up the month — see the Purchases, receipts and refunds guide.
5. Refunds
Refunds mostly take care of themselves, and you can always refund someone manually:
- Player leaves — players who leave more than 6 hours before the start are refunded automatically, minus the service fee. Within 6 hours of the start, leaving no longer qualifies for a refund.
- Tournament deleted — all paid players are refunded automatically.
- Manual refund — refund any payment in one click from the wallet's Payments list, whenever you choose.
The Padel Fast service fee is never refunded, and a refunded player cannot rejoin the tournament. Refunds can take up to 5 business days to reach the player's account.
6. What about leagues?
Entry fees exist on tournaments only — a league has no fee of its own. To charge players in a league, add an entrance fee to each tournament you schedule within it.
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