Create a split yourself

Use this when you already know who is paying and how much — a quote you agreed over the phone, a booking, an invoice you are splitting between named people. You enter the emails and the amounts, and everyone gets a pay link.

It is the opposite way round from hosted checkout, where the buyer decides who to invite and for how much. Pick by who knows the split:

	You set it up	The buyer sets it up
Use	This page	Hosted checkout
Who is invited is decided by	You, up front	The buyer, on our page
Started from	The dashboard, or your own signed-in session	Your server, with your API key

You need Stripe connected first

Each person's share is charged straight to your own Stripe account, so there has to be one. GET /api/merchants/me shows stripe_charges_enabled: true once you are ready — gate your own checkout on that. See Become a merchant.

Be aware this endpoint only checks that you have started connecting Stripe, not that Stripe has finished approving you. A half-finished account therefore fails later, and passes Stripe's own error message straight back to you instead of a tidy one. Hosted checkout checks properly and gives you Finish Stripe onboarding before accepting checkouts.

From the dashboard

Go to /merchant/splits/new, add each participant's email and amount, and optionally an order reference. There is no order-total field: the total is the sum of the amounts you enter, shown on the submit button. Every row needs an email and a positive amount before the form will submit. The form does not check the £1 minimum share, so a row under £1 submits and is then rejected by the API with Each share must be at least £1. Then share the generated pay links.

From the API

POST /api/checkout-splits

Sign in as Owner, Admin or Member and send that session as Authorization: Bearer <supabase token>. A Finance colleague cannot create splits, and sending a merchantId for a business you are not in returns 403 Not your merchant.

Your API key does not work here — it only opens hosted checkout sessions. If you want your server to start a split on its own, that is the page you want.

{
  "merchantId": "<your merchant id>",
  "orderReference": "ORDER-123",
  "currency": "gbp",
  "participants": [
    { "email": "[email protected]", "amountMinor": 4000 },
    { "email": "[email protected]",  "amountMinor": 4000 },
    { "email": "[email protected]",   "amountMinor": 4000 }
  ]
}

This endpoint takes pence

amountMinor is in pence, so £40.00 is 4000. It must be a whole number of at least 100, because each share must be at least £1. Hosted checkout is the other way round and takes its amount in pounds.

amountMinor is the person's share. Their card is charged that plus SharePay's flat 20p service fee, so a 4000 share is a £40.20 charge, and you receive the £40 less your merchant fee and Stripe's processing fees. See what SharePay charges.

Returns 201 with { id, status: "pending", participants: [...] }. Each entry in participants is:

Field	Notes
`id`	The participant row's id
`email`	As you sent it
`amountMinor`	Their share, in pence
`feeMinor`	The SharePay service fee on their charge, in pence. Their card is charged `amountMinor + feeMinor`
`paymentIntentId`	The Stripe payment holding their share
`clientSecret`	Only needed if you are building your own pay page rather than using ours
`payToken`	What their pay link is built from

The casing changes between endpoints

This create response returns payToken, camelCase. The list and detail endpoints in Refunds, disputes and order status return the same value as pay_token, snake_case. Reading pay_token off the create response gives you undefined.

A 201 also means we have emailed every participant except the creator their invite, with a pay link in it. See what we email your customers.

Request fields

Field	Required	Notes
`merchantId`	Yes	Must be a merchant the signed-in account owns
`orderReference`	Yes	Any string. It is not unique and nothing dedupes on it. It appears on the Stripe charge description, in participant emails, and in webhook payloads
`currency`	No	Defaults to `gbp`. It is not validated here. Anything you send is passed straight to Stripe, so a value other than `gbp` either opens charges in that currency on a GB account or fails with a raw Stripe error. Send `gbp`
`participants`	Yes	Non-empty array of `{ email, amountMinor }`

Limits and validation

No cap on how many people. Hosted checkout stops at 20; this endpoint does not stop you at all. We place each person's card hold one at a time, and each one is a real call to Stripe, so a long list is slow and every extra name adds to it. Keep it sensible.
Each share must be at least £1. amountMinor must be a positive integer of 100 or more, and anything smaller is rejected with 400 Each share must be at least £1. before any Stripe call is made, so nobody is charged and no hold is placed. There is no maximum per share, and no order total to check the sum against: the split's total is whatever the shares add up to.
email is only checked for being a non-empty string. It is not validated as an address, and an unreachable one simply means that person never gets their invite.

If your request times out

Retrying is not safe. Neither way of creating a split can tell a retry apart from a new request, and there is no key you can send to make it. So if a request times out and you simply send it again, you get a second split, and a second card hold on every customer.

If you are not sure whether the first attempt worked, look before you retry: GET /api/checkout-splits lists your splits newest first. Record the returned id against your own order reference as soon as you have it.

Errors

Status	Body	Cause
`401`	`Missing or invalid Authorization header`	No `Bearer` token
`401`	`Invalid token`	Expired or bad session token
`403`	`{"code":"consent_required","error":"Consent required", ...}`	The signed-in account has not accepted the current terms or privacy policy
`400`	`Validation failed`	`merchantId` or `orderReference` not strings, or `participants` missing or empty
`400`	`Each participant needs an email and a positive integer amountMinor`	A participant failed the per-row check
`400`	`Each share must be at least £1.`	A participant's `amountMinor` is under `100`
`404`	`Merchant not found`	Unknown `merchantId`
`403`	`Not your merchant`	The `merchantId` belongs to another account
`400`	`A checkout split needs at least one participant`	The participant list arrived empty
`400`	`Merchant has no Stripe connected account`	You have not started connecting Stripe
`400`	`{"code":"billing_card_required", ...}`	Your processor (Adyen) needs a card on file in Settings, Billing, in the same mode, before it takes splits
`400`	`{"code":"billing_paused", ...}`	A SharePay bill has been unpaid for 14 days. Pay it in Settings, Billing and splits work again at once
`400`	Stripe's own error message	A card hold could not be placed. Nothing is ever taken on this path, so nobody is charged. We try to release the holds already placed, and the split ends at `creation_failed`. See `creation_failed`

From the dashboard​

From the API​

Request fields​

Limits and validation​

If your request times out​

Errors​