The fine print — money, plainly

Who actually processes your payment, who holds your card, where the money goes, and what the platform's cut is. No mystery meat.

Who touches your card

Payments are processed by Stripe, one of the largest payment processors in the world. Card entry happens in Stripe's own secure fields — your card number and security code never pass through or get stored on this platform. What the platform keeps is the display stub (brand, last four, expiry) and a reference token only Stripe can use.
This is a deliberate architecture with a name (PCI SAQ-A, for the professionals): the platform cannot leak what it never possesses.

Where your money goes

When you buy from an organization, the money routes to that organization's own merchant account (Stripe Connect). The platform is the venue, not the till — each org receives its own funds, handles its own payouts.
The platform never takes a cut of the organization's revenue. The seller keeps the full listed price. What keeps the lights on is a small service fee on the buyer's side — and you see it, plainly, which is the next section.

The service fee — itemized, never hidden

At checkout, the service fee appears as its own line: a small percentage of the price plus a few cents fixed. It's never folded into the listed price, so what the organization charges and what the platform charges are always two visible, separate things.
Small tickets get a break automatically: on inexpensive items, the fixed part waives itself, so a cheap drop-in never wears a fee that looks like a concert surcharge.
Card payments also show "Payment processing (standard rate)" — that's the card networks' cost, the one every card transaction anywhere carries. It's billed at the published standard card rate and itemized separately, precisely so it's never confused with the platform's own fee. It is not the platform's revenue.
Some organizations choose to absorb the service fee for their buyers — then you simply see the clean price, no fee lines at all. Same amount either way; only who pays it changes.
The numbers behind the fee print on your receipt. The math is checkable, on purpose.

Refunds, credits & what comes back

A refund returns your money to your card, and the service fee comes back proportionally with it — half the money back, half the fee back; all of it, all of it.
The processing line doesn't refund — the card networks keep their cost on a refunded charge, which is true of card payments everywhere, so it's true here.
An organization may offer you a credit (say, a class credit) instead of a refund. A credit keeps your money where it was and gives you something to spend it on — nothing moves back, and nothing about the original purchase changes. Whether that trade suits you is always your conversation with the organization.

Disputes & chargebacks

If you dispute a charge with your bank, that process runs through Stripe to the selling organization. Order history reflects the dispute state. Honest advice: message the organization first — refunds are faster than disputes for everyone.

The paperwork

Receipts are per-purchase, in your order history.
The legal terms (Terms of Service, Privacy Policy) are SportsCore's own documents: not yet published — ask SportsCore support · not yet published — ask SportsCore support.
Professional/security evaluators: the technical security & data-handling overview is written for you.

Did you know? The service fee's fixed part waives itself on small tickets — below a set share of the price it simply disappears, so a five-dollar drop-in pays a few cents in fees, not a flat toll. Nobody has to remember to apply this; the math does it.