Overview
Turn your storytelling into revenue by transforming your Tours into Paid Tours. Pladia integrates seamlessly with Stripe, which manages all the financial heavy lifting—handling secure payments, receipts, and reporting.
Once you select Payment Required for a Tour within the Console, Pladia automatically syncs with Stripe to create the necessary products. This means you can manage your pricing and content in one place, without ever needing to build product catalogs in a separate system.
Learn how to Create and Manage Tours and about the Tours Visitor Experience in Empower before you configure payment settings.
1. Connect Your Stripe Account
Before you can sell access to your content, your Venue must be linked to a Stripe account.
If you do not have an existing Stripe account, you will need to create one at Stripe.com.
Contact Customer Success to provide your API keys and Stripe account ID. Our team will perform the backend integration to link your Console to your Stripe environment.
2. Create a Paid Tour
Once the integration is active, you can convert any Tour into a paid experience directly from the Console.
Navigate to the Tours tab and select the Tour you wish to monetize.
Mark the Tour as 'Payment required'.
Enter a price for the Tour. Once you're happy with your changes, Pladia will automatically generate a "Product" in your Stripe account.
Important: To keep your integration running smoothly, don't create products manually in Stripe. Let the Console handle all product creation for you. The automatic sync ensures a perfect link between your PWA and Stripe without the need for any manual setup in your payment dashboard.
3. Supported Pricing Models
Pladia supports several pricing structures to suit your Venue's needs:
Fixed Price: A standard set fee (e.g., $5.00) for access.
Choose What You Pay: This allows visitors to determine their own price (configured within Stripe).
Free (Zero Price): Useful for promotional periods or specific access tiers.
4. The Visitor Experience
Pladia utilizes Stripe’s hosted checkout to ensure a secure and familiar payment process for your visitors.
Checkout Flow: When a visitor taps Unlock Tour in your PWA, they are redirected to a Stripe hosted page.
Automatic Return: After a successful transaction, Stripe automatically returns the visitor to your PWA, where the Tour is instantly unlocked.
Access Control: Access is managed via a success parameter in the URL. To minimize friction, visitors can share this URL across their own devices (e.g., buying on a desktop and viewing on a phone).
Receipts: Stripe sends automated email receipts to the visitor. You can customize the look of these receipts and the checkout page within your Stripe Settings.
5. Coupons and Promotion Codes
You can offer discounts or member-only free access by using Stripe coupons.
Navigate to your Stripe dashboard and create a Coupon.
Enable "Use customer-facing promotion codes" (e.g., MEMBER2026).
Assign the coupon to the specific Product (Tour) automatically created by Pladia in Stripe.
Distribute the code to your visitors. They can enter this code during the Stripe checkout process to apply the discount.
6. Fees and Payment Methods
Payment Methods: You can enable or disable specific payment methods (Credit Cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, etc.) directly in your Stripe settings.
Fees: Pladia does not take any transaction fees. However, Stripe applies its own processing fees per transaction.
Disputes: As Pladia does not have access to your private Stripe account, all payment disputes or refunds must be managed by you through the Stripe dashboard.
Confirm Your Changes
After setting up your Paid Tour and price in the Console, remember to Publish and complete a Public Release in the Releases tab. This ensures the "Unlock" prompts and pricing are visible to your visitors in the live PWA.
You're all set! Contact Customer Success if you have any further questions.