Frequently asked questions
Getting paid
How do I get paid?
Once your customer has paid, we pay the money out to your receiving account, usually straight away. If our payout balance is low at that moment, it arrives the next working day instead. It is one payout per sale.
Which account am I paid into?
The receiving account you added: a mobile money wallet (payout fee GHS 1) or a Ghana bank account (payout fee GHS 8). A payment link is paid into its own receiving account while that account is active, and otherwise into your main receiving account. It must be in your own name, or your business name for a business account: a payout to an account in someone else’s name is stopped and checked by our team. An account refused for being in someone else’s name stays refused, however the number is written.
What do I need before I can take payments?
A Ghana mobile money receiving account (MTN, Telecel or AirtelTigo). Without one, customers are told your link cannot take payments right now, before they are charged.
Which currency can I accept?
Ghana cedis (GHS) and US dollars (USD). A payment link or shop order priced in US dollars is paid by the buyer in cedis at the live exchange rate, and you are paid out in cedis. A payment in any other currency is turned down at checkout, so nobody is charged for something we cannot pay out to you.
How can my customers pay, and can people abroad pay?
Your customers choose on our secure page: Mobile Money (Ghana numbers), bank transfer (cedi links), or a bank card. Cards from other countries are accepted too, so a buyer abroad can pay by card without a Ghana phone number. You are always paid out in cedis. A payment link or shop order priced in US dollars is charged to the buyer in cedis at the live exchange rate. The payment network takes the same 1.95% on a card, Mobile Money or bank payment, and foreign cards cost no more.
Are there limits on a payment?
After fees, each sale must leave you between GHS 5 and GHS 10,000. A payment that would leave you less or more is turned down before the customer is charged, and they are asked to pay a different amount.
What comes off each sale?
One fee is taken from each sale, everything included, plus a small payout fee when the money is sent to you. Your customer only pays the price you set, so add the fees to your price if you want to receive an exact amount. The fee calculator shows the price to charge. See Pricing for the current rates.
How long does the payout take?
Payouts are usually sent straight away after the customer pays. If our payout balance is low at that moment, the payout arrives the next working day instead. Until your payout is confirmed, the sale shows Hold. When it is confirmed, it changes to Safe to ship by itself.
What if the payout to me cannot be completed?
Your customer is refunded automatically. The sale shows Do not ship, then Refunded, and you get a notification. A person is only alerted if the customer refund itself keeps failing.
Can Xaurr pay my riders or agents from my own app?
Yes, with Xaurr Payouts. Request it in Business Tools. Once approved, your app adds each worker, who verifies once with their Ghana Card and a mobile money number in their own name. Your customers pay into your Payouts balance, your app credits each worker after every job, and workers withdraw to their own mobile money from inside your app, usually instantly. Money credited to a worker is set aside for them. You can build and test straight away with test money; live payouts open once Xaurr confirms your account. The steps and fees are in the API reference under Xaurr Payouts.
Shipping and orders
When is it safe to ship an order?
Only when the sale says Safe to ship. That means your payout has been confirmed and the money has reached you. Before that, the customer has paid but the money has not reached you yet, and if it cannot, the customer is refunded automatically. So do not ship while a sale says Hold.
What do the tags on a sale mean?
Safe to ship: your payout is confirmed, ship the order. Hold: the customer has paid but your payout is not confirmed yet, do not ship. Do not ship: the payout could not be completed or a refund is under way. Refunded: the customer has their money back, cancel the order.
How do I turn on Safe to ship for a link?
When you create or edit a payment request, tick "This link is for a physical item I will ship". We then tell you on every payment when it is Safe to ship and when to hold. Links that do not ship anything, such as a service, a fundraiser or your Storefront QR, show the plain payout state instead: Paid out to you or Payout pending.
How do I see which order a payment is for?
When you create or edit a payment request, add a block such as Order number or Tracking ID under "What to ask each payer". The customer types it at checkout, and it shows next to the sale in your Payments list, in your download, and in the messages sent to your shop.
Can I ask my customers for other information?
Yes. Tap a ready-made block (Order number, Tracking ID, Phone number, Email, Delivery address, Note, Quantity, Date) or add "Your own field" and name it anything. You can rename every block, mark it required or optional, and drag blocks or use the arrows to change the order. You can ask for up to 8 things. Their answers are checked before the payment is accepted, and they appear with the sale and in your download.
How do I get in touch with a buyer?
Each paid sale in your Payments list has Call, WhatsApp and Email buttons, with a short message about the sale already written. They appear when the buyer has given you a way to reach them: the email they typed at checkout, a phone or email you asked for with a field on your link, or the mobile money number they chose to share by ticking "Let the seller contact me on this number". Nothing is shared unless the buyer chooses to, so add a phone or email field to your link if you always need one.
How do I get everyone details and all their files after a big donation or campaign?
Open the Payments list of your link and choose "Export everything". Xaurr prepares, on its own servers, a spreadsheet of every contributor (name, email, phone, all their answers, amount and date) and every file they uploaded, packed into ZIP parts, however many contributors there are. You can close the window while it works. When it is ready you download each part; the spreadsheet says beside every file answer which ZIP part and name the file has. Every file is checked for viruses first: a flagged file is left out, and a file that could not be checked yet is listed so you can export again later. An export is kept for 7 days, and you can start up to 5 a day. Files themselves are kept for 90 days after the sale.
Can my customers upload a file when they pay?
Yes. Add the "Photo or document" block (or change any block to "File upload") under "What to ask each payer". You can ask for up to 2 files on one link, and you choose whether each is required. Customers can upload a PDF, PNG, JPG or WebP up to 2.5 MB. Photos are shrunk on the customer phone before they are sent, so they upload fast. Xaurr checks what each file really is, and scans it for viruses and malware the first time you open it: a file that has not been scanned clean is never handed to anyone, and an infected one is deleted. Xaurr does not use these files for anything. They are kept for 90 days after the sale so you can download them, then deleted (the sale and its answers stay). There is no extra fee for questions or uploads on a link. Once the sale is paid, the file appears next to it in your Payments list with a download button, and "Download with files" gives you the sales spreadsheet and every uploaded file together in one ZIP. Only you can open the files your customers send, and only for a paid sale. A file that was never used for a payment is deleted after a day, and a file from a payment that failed after a week.
Does Safe to ship apply to fundraisers and my Storefront QR?
Their sales are paid out and can be refunded in exactly the same way, but they do not need shipping, so they say Paid out to you or Payout pending instead. Only a payment request you mark as shipping a physical item talks about shipping.
Will Xaurr cancel the order in my shop?
Xaurr handles the payment and your shop handles the order, so we cannot cancel it for you. When a payment is refunded we send your shop a signed payment.refunded message with the order number, so your shop can cancel it. The Developers section explains how to listen for it.
Refunds
How do I refund a customer?
Open the link's Payments list and press Refund on a sale that shows Safe to ship. We send a mobile money request to the number your payout went to, for the sale amount plus any fee on that request. When you approve it on your phone, your customer is refunded automatically.
Do I get my fees back?
No. The fees taken from the sale are not returned. You pay back the full sale amount.
What if I do not approve the request?
Nothing happens. Nothing is taken from you and the customer is not refunded. You can send the request again.
Which payments can I refund?
Full refunds of Ghana cedi payments made by customers without a Xaurr account, within 60 days, once the payout to you is confirmed. Refunding part of a payment is not available yet.
Why can I not refund a sale that is on Hold?
Because your payout has not been confirmed yet. If it cannot be completed, your customer is refunded automatically, so there is nothing for you to do.
Paying
How do I type my mobile money number?
Type it without the leading 0. The country code is already shown next to the box. However you write it (0244 123 456, 244123456 or +233 24 412 3456), it is turned into the right format for you.
What if I was charged but the seller could not be paid?
You are refunded automatically, to the number you paid from. It can take a little while to show.
Why was my payment turned away?
The seller cannot receive that payment right now, for example because they have no receiving account, or the amount is too small or too large for them to be paid. You were not charged. Try a different amount, or contact the seller.
Which order number do I enter?
The number the seller asks for. If you are paying for an order in an online shop, it is the order number that shop showed you.
Website plugin and payment links
How does the website plugin relate to payment links?
They are the same thing. The plugin's Pay button opens one of your payment links inside your website. A payment made through it is a payment link payment: it is paid out the same way and appears in that link's Payments list, marked with the site it came from.
Is the fee different through the plugin?
Payments made through the website plugin or the embedded checkout are charged at the plugin rate. See pricing for the current rates.
Does the plugin ship or cancel my orders?
Not yet. The plugin shows the Pay button. To automate shipping and cancelling, your shop listens for Xaurr's signed messages: it ships on payment.payout_confirmed and cancels on payment.refunded.
Do I have to use the plugin?
No. You can share the link itself, or put the same button on any website with the embed snippet.
Developers and webhooks
Can my online shop charge a shopping cart total?
Yes, in test mode today. A WooCommerce shop can download the Xaurr for WooCommerce plugin from the Plugins page: shoppers see "Pay with Xaurr" at checkout, pay on our secure page, and the order moves to Processing once Xaurr confirms it is safe to ship. Create a test key in Business Tools under Webhooks & API Keys. Any other shop can use the Xaurr Checkout API, where your shop sends its own order number and the exact cart total, then sends the buyer to the Xaurr checkout address it gets back. The buyer pays with Mobile Money on our page and is returned to your shop automatically. Each order takes one payment and expires, and sending the same order number again gives you the same order. Your shop then hears about it through the usual payment.sent, payment.payout_confirmed and payment.refunded messages, each carrying your order number. Test keys work now and move no real money; live keys open after approval.
What do I need to take live payments through the API or plugin?
Test keys work straight away, with no verification. For live payments, sign up as Developer & APIs (or use a Business account), verify your identity and, in the same form, tell us your website or app, what you sell and your expected monthly sales. Our team approves them; a checklist beside the form shows every step. Live payments then work from your approved website, for your own business only (if you build for a client, your client opens their own Xaurr account). Payouts go to an account in your own name, usually straight away (otherwise the next working day).
Which messages does my shop receive?
payment.sent: the customer paid. For a payment link it says ship_status hold. payment.payout_confirmed: your payout is confirmed, it says ship_status safe_to_ship, and this is the one to ship on. payment.refunded: the customer was refunded, it says ship_status refunded. payment.failed: the payment did not go through. Payment link messages carry the order number the customer typed.
How do I check a message really came from Xaurr?
Every message has an X-Xaurr-Signature header that looks like sha256=abc123. Compute HMAC-SHA256 of the raw request body using your webhook secret, write it as lowercase hex, and compare. Reject the message if they differ. The body holds event, timestamp, data and environment.
Can the same message arrive twice?
Treat every message as one that could repeat. If your shop has already handled that order, do nothing.
Can I ship when the button says payment successful?
No. The success event in the browser only means the customer has paid. It carries safeToShip set to false. Ship when payment.payout_confirmed arrives, or when the sale says Safe to ship in your dashboard.
Your money
Does Xaurr hold my money?
No. Xaurr passes payments through: customer funds are not kept in a Xaurr balance, and each sale is paid out on its own.
How accurate is AI Invoicing and AI Accounting & Bookkeeping?
It reads the real numbers and text in whatever you upload rather than guessing, but a blurry scan or an unusual layout can still trip it up. Anything it is not fully confident about is marked "AI: please check" so you can review or correct it before it is saved, instead of a mistake slipping in unnoticed. Always give the result a quick look before confirming.