How Camper BMS Handles Guest Payments (And Why We Don't Hold Your Money)

When you're running a campground, every dollar matters. So when you hand over control of your payment processing to a booking platform, you want to know exactly where your money is going and who's touching it along the way.

The short answer with Camper BMS: we're not in the payment flow at all. Card details never touch our servers, and guest funds settle directly to your own account.

The Problem With Platforms That Sit in the Middle

A lot of booking platforms insert themselves into the payment flow. A guest makes a booking, the money goes to the platform first, and then eventually it gets passed on to you. Sometimes after a holding period. Sometimes minus a cut. Sometimes with conditions attached.

That might work fine for holiday rental marketplaces where the platform is the shopfront. But for campgrounds and caravan parks running their own operation? It adds risk, delays, and a layer of complexity you don't need.

Here are the common problems with that approach:

• Settlement delays. Your money sits in someone else's account for days (sometimes weeks) before it reaches yours.
• Fee deductions. The platform takes their cut before you see a cent, so you never receive the full invoice amount.
• Disputes get complicated. If a guest disputes a charge, you're dealing with the platform as a middleman instead of resolving it directly with your payment provider.
• Less control. You're locked into whatever payment terms the platform dictates. Want to switch providers? Tough luck.

How Camper BMS Does It Differently

Camper BMS is a booking and property management platform. We are not a payment processor and we are not a merchant of record.

That distinction matters. It means guest payments are processed and settled by your payment provider under your own account. The money flows directly from your guest to your business through your own payment provider account.

Here's how it works in practice:

1. You connect your own payment provider (Square, eWay, Westpac OnlinePay, ANZ Worldline, or Pin Payments) to Camper BMS via an API Integration (API keys or OAuth).
2. A guest makes a booking or pays an invoice through your Camper BMS-powered booking flow.
3. The payment is processed directly by your provider. The funds go straight into your account, under your provider agreement, on your settlement schedule.
4. Camper BMS records the final high level transaction details, such as payment status and total value, and updates the booking status automatically.

Refunds are processed by your payment provider under your account. You can initiate refunds through Camper BMS where the payment provider's API supports it - it's a technical interface only, with you in control.

That's it. We facilitate the connection between your booking system and your payment provider. We don't sit in the middle of the money.

So How Does Camper BMS Get Paid?

Good question. If we're not taking a cut of guest payments, where does our revenue come from?

We invoice you separately. Once a month, we send you a single invoice covering your platform fee (a small percentage of the total value of paid guest invoices recorded in Camper BMS during the month), plus any opt-in services you've enabled - like API write requests, which are billed per call (reads are free). It's billed in arrears via Stripe.

In Camper BMS, an invoice is created whenever a guest makes a booking that has a cost associated. The invoice is usually paid by the customer at the time of booking. Campgrounds can also manually issue invoices from the admin dashboard.

That invoice is completely separate from your guest payment flow. We don't deduct anything from guest payments. We never take a percentage of guest payments. We send you a bill, and you pay it on your terms.

Quieter month? A smaller fee. Busier month? A larger fee. No subscriptions, no minimums.

Why We Built It This Way

We could have built Camper BMS to process payments directly. Plenty of platforms do. But we deliberately chose not to, for a few reasons:

You keep full control. Your payment provider, your provider agreement, your settlement schedule. If you want to switch from Square to eWay tomorrow, you can. We're not locking you in.

It reduces your risk. Card data flows straight from guest to provider, so card details we never hold can't be exposed from our systems. You're not relying on us to safeguard payment data we don't need.

It reduces our risk too. Camper BMS isn't trying to be a payments company. Staying out of the money flow keeps our compliance footprint, chargeback exposure, and regulatory burden small, so we can focus on building good software instead of running a payments operation on the side.

Funds settle on your provider's schedule. Camper BMS isn't in the flow, so settlement timing is set entirely by your payment provider's agreement.

It's simpler for disputes. If a guest queries a charge, you deal directly with your payment provider. No middleman, no back-and-forth with a platform support team trying to relay information between parties.

It's more transparent. You can see exactly what your payment provider charges you, and you can see exactly what Camper BMS charges you. Two separate line items. No hidden fees buried in transaction processing.

What About Payment Provider Fees?

Your payment provider (Square, eWay, etc.) will charge you their own processing fees for each transaction. Those fees are between you and your provider, set by whatever agreement you have with them.

Camper BMS has no involvement in those fees. We don't mark them up, bundle them, or add anything on top. Your payment provider costs and your Camper BMS costs are completely separate, so there's no blended rate making it hard to tell what you're actually paying for.

The Bottom Line

We built it this way because we think campground operators deserve to know exactly where their money is at all times. You've earned it. It should go straight to you.

If you're currently using a system that sits between you and your guests' payments, it might be worth asking why. And if you're still managing bookings manually because you don't trust platforms with your money, now you know there's a better option.