When your card is charged

A card before you book, not after

Where card payments are switched on, you need a card saved on your Kabora account before you can book or send a booking request. Add one under Account settings → Your payments — or, when you book a trip for a company you are in, the company's card counts. The reason is the wait: a request with no card sits in the host's queue, they turn down other dates for it, and only when they say yes does anyone discover there was no way to pay.

Not every host can take a card yet. Where one has not finished setting up payments there is nowhere for a card to land and nothing can be charged. You are still asked to keep a card on your account before you book — that gate is the same on every listing.

Two ways a booking starts

• Instant booking — your dates confirm as soon as the payment goes through.
• A booking request — you are not charged unless the host accepts.

Accepting is not the same as paying. When a host accepts a request, payment opens on your trip page; paying is a separate step you take, and the booking only becomes confirmed once that payment goes through.

The balance and the Pay button on your trip page are shown to the person who booked, signed in.

A stay your host added for you

A host can add a booking for you themselves. When they add it as one you settle with them directly, your trip page shows no balance and no Pay button. You may already have paid them some other way, and Kabora can't know that.

If they want you to pay through Kabora after all, they send you a payment link: an email with the amount due and a link to your trip page. Sign in with the address it came to, and the balance and the Pay button are there. If you've already paid them, reply to that email and tell them.

Paying with a company's card

If your stay was booked for a company you belong to on Kabora, and the company keeps a card, your trip page shows that card above your own, headed with the company's name — for a company called Acme, Pay with Acme's card. You see the card's brand and its last four digits, never the full number. Only people in that company are offered it.

Your dates are not held until money lands

Until a payment goes through, the nights stay on sale to everybody else. If someone books and pays for them first, your booking is released.

Kabora emails you when that happens. Your trip page, though, describes the released booking as a request nobody answered in time — which is not what happened. So if a booking disappears, read the email, and message your host if you still want the stay.

Nothing gives an unpaid booking up on a timer either. A rule for that is written — a day after you booked, or two hours before check-in, whichever comes first — but it is not switched on. Today an unpaid booking stays open until somebody else pays for those nights, or you or your host cancel it.

Who is actually charging you

Each host takes payment through their own card processor, so their business name is what appears on your statement, not Kabora. Kabora never holds your money and never sees your card number — that goes straight to the processor.

If a card is declined

You get an email, and the booking stays open so you can try another card. The nights are still not held while you do, exactly as they were not held before the first attempt, and the email says so: your dates aren't held until you pay.

How payment news reaches you

Payment news comes by email and in your message thread with the host, and the Kabora app can send a notification too. Account settings → Notifications sets, for each kind of news, email, phone or both. Muting a single conversation is narrower than it sounds: it stops that thread's messages reaching you, and payment emails still arrive.