Top-up

A top-up is money you pull from your own external bank account into your Stripe balance, so your platform has funds available to send onward. It's the reverse direction of a payout: instead of Stripe sending money to your bank, you send money to Stripe.

Why platforms use top-ups

On a Stripe Connect platform, your platform account sometimes needs to move money to connected accounts faster than incoming payments accumulate — or before any payments exist at all. Adding funds directly gives you a working balance to draw from. Topped-up funds can be used to:

• Pay connected accounts via transfers when your balance would otherwise be too low.
• Cover future refunds and disputes.
• Repay a negative platform balance.

How it works

When you add funds, Stripe creates a top-up object (with an id like tu_...). For a bank transfer, the top-up isn't created until Stripe actually receives the money — so the funds aren't immediately available. You must add funds from a verified bank account; an unverified account has to confirm microdeposits first, which typically appear within a couple of business days.

Top-up vs transfer

The two are easy to confuse but move in opposite directions on the platform. A top-up brings money in to your platform balance from your bank. A transfer moves money out of that balance to a connected account. A common flow is top-up, then transfer: fund the platform, then distribute to sellers.

ChargeBell is read-only and never moves money — it can surface Stripe activity in Slack, but topping up and transferring always happen inside Stripe itself.