Booking Stripe fees in Germany: clearing account, reverse charge and Stripe Technology Europe Ltd

The first time you book Stripe, you usually trip over the same thing: less money arrives in your bank account than your customers paid, and the sender is not simply Stripe but Stripe Technology Europe Ltd. Both have a reason. This page explains who is behind the name, how to keep payment, fee and payout cleanly apart, and what applies to VAT on the fees. How the bookings turn into a finished batch for DATEV is described in the guide exporting Stripe to DATEV.

Who is Stripe Technology Europe Ltd?

Stripe Technology Europe, Limited is the Irish Stripe company based at 1 Wilton Park, Dublin 2. The Central Bank of Ireland has authorized it as an e-money institution, reference number C187865. It may issue e-money, execute payments and process card payments for merchants (Stripe: Authorised Payment Services).

There is also a second Irish company. The contracting party for Stripe accounts in the European Economic Area is Stripe Payments Europe, Limited. Stripe Technology Europe comes in where the terms for financial services provide for it (Stripe Services Agreement). For you as a merchant, that means:

Which of the two companies appears on your fee invoice is best read directly from the document. For VAT it makes no difference, since both are based in Ireland.

If you see the name on your bank statement as a private person, the transaction belongs to a provider that bills through Stripe. The date and amount usually lead quickly to the matching purchase.

Which fees Stripe charges

Stripe charges no base fee, only a price per payment. The standard prices for Germany according to Stripe's price list (as of October 2026):

On top come paid add-ons such as Stripe Billing, Stripe Invoicing or Stripe Tax. Individually agreed terms take precedence over the price list. What matters for bookkeeping: Stripe deducts the fee directly from the payment amount. There is no invoice for it that you pay by transfer.

Where the money goes

For your bookkeeping, Stripe is not a bank account but a waypoint. Your customer's payment first lands in your Stripe balance. Stripe deducts the fee there, and only after a few days does the rest go to your bank as a lump sum. In the EU this usually takes three business days according to Stripe, and seven calendar days the first time (Stripe Docs: Payouts).

You map exactly this waypoint with a clearing account (Geldtransitkonto). It takes in the payment in full, passes the fee on to expenses and the payout on to the bank. Once everything is booked, it stands at zero.

Example · one card payment of €119.00

From the customer through the clearing account to the bank

Customer pays

Card payment

€119.00Revenue €100.00 plus €19.00 VAT, booked in full

Stripe clearing account

1. Payment arrives+€119.00 debit
2. Stripe keeps the fee−€2.04 to incidental costs of payment transactions
3. Stripe pays out−€116.96 to the bank
4. Balance€0.00

Result

Bank€116.96 as a lump-sum transfer from Stripe

Expense€2.04 fee, plus reverse charge on the fee

DATEVthree bookings, after which the clearing account is at zero

If you use other payment providers besides Stripe, a separate clearing account per provider is common practice. It is not required, but it is the only way to see at month-end which provider still owes you something. In the standard chart of accounts the account is called Geldtransit, number 1360 in SKR03 and 1460 in SKR04. Further providers get the following numbers.

The journal entries in SKR03 and SKR04

Four transactions cover almost everything that runs through Stripe. The account numbers come from the DATEV standard charts of accounts (SKR03 and SKR04). Your tax advisor (Steuerkanzlei) may use different accounts.

Two points decide whether the books add up in the end. First, revenue is always booked at the amount your customer paid, never at the payout amount. Second, the fee gets a tax key for services from other EU countries, so the VAT under § 13b ends up in the advance VAT return. More on this below under VAT.

Worked example for one month

An online shop sells 30 items at €119.00 gross each in March, all paid with a standard EEA card. One customer returns their item and gets a refund. For simplicity, Stripe pays everything out in one sum. All figures are examples.

These become the following bookings, here in SKR04:

The clearing account then stands at zero: €3,570.00 minus €61.20 minus €119.00 minus €3,389.80. Net revenue is €2,900.00, with €551.00 VAT on it.

Under § 13b, the fees of €61.20 carry €11.63 VAT. With full input VAT deduction you pay nothing of this in the end, because the same amount comes off again as input VAT. A Kleinunternehmer, on the other hand, pays the €11.63 to the tax office.

Refunds, chargebacks, foreign currency

Refund

Stripe deducts the refunded amount from your balance, and the original fee stays with Stripe (Stripe Docs: Refunds). You correct revenue and VAT in the month in which you refund. Toward your customer, this calls for a correction document, such as a cancellation invoice (Stornorechnung), as described under invoice correction.

Chargeback and card dispute

If the customer claws the money back through their bank, Stripe deducts the amount from your balance. For a dispute, the price list adds a €20.00 fee. The invoice remains correct, because the service was delivered. In accounting terms, the receivable is open again. Only once it is finally uncollectible do you correct the VAT under § 17(2) no. 1 UStG. The dispute fee is an expense like the normal Stripe fee.

Foreign currency

If your customer pays in another currency, Stripe converts to euros and, according to the price list, charges 2% extra for it. For revenue and VAT you need the exchange rate under the rules of the German VAT Act, not Stripe's conversion rate. How that works is explained under converting foreign currency.

Fees charged separately

Some costs Stripe does not deduct from an individual payment but as a separate item from your balance, for example for add-on products. They also belong on the fee account and run through the clearing account.

VAT on Stripe fees

Stripe provides its services for European accounts from Ireland and charges no VAT on them. Stripe names exceptions only for a few countries, and Germany is not one of them (Stripe Support: Taxation of Stripe fees). Whether you have to declare the tax yourself, Stripe leaves open and refers you to your tax advisor. Under German law, the check runs like this:

1. Place of supply. A service to a business for its business is supplied where the recipient runs its business from (§ 3a(2) UStG). For your German business, that is Germany.
2. Who owes the tax. For services from a business in another EU country, you as the recipient owe the tax (§ 13b(1) and (5) sentence 1 UStG). It arises at the end of the month in which Stripe provided the service, not only when the invoice arrives.
3. Input VAT. You deduct the tax owed this way as input VAT if you received the service for your business (§ 15(1) sentence 1 no. 4 UStG).
4. Advance VAT return. On the 2026 form, the fees go in line 30: tax base in box 46, tax in box 47. The resulting input VAT goes in box 67 (BMF, 2026 form template, German).

There is one open question you should know about. Services in payment and transfer transactions are VAT-exempt under § 4 no. 8 letter d UStG. Whether Stripe's fees fall under this in whole or in part has not been explicitly decided for Stripe, and Stripe itself says nothing on the matter. In practice, many tax advisors treat the fees under § 13b. If you have full input VAT deduction, you end up at zero either way. For Kleinunternehmer and businesses with VAT-exempt sales, though, real money depends on the classification. That decision is for your tax advisor.

The fees also do not belong in the EC Sales List (Zusammenfassende Meldung). There you only report services you yourself provide to businesses in other EU countries (§ 18a UStG).

Special case small businesses (Kleinunternehmer)

The small-business exemption (Kleinunternehmerregelung) makes your own sales VAT-exempt (§ 19(1) UStG). The tax you owe as a recipient under § 13b is unaffected, because § 13b(5) only requires that you are a business. Three things follow:

A Kleinunternehmer with €61.20 in Stripe fees in March files an advance VAT return for March and pays €11.63. This is easy to forget, because otherwise no advance returns are due. More on the exemption itself: Kleinunternehmer and e-invoicing.

Which documents to keep

Bookings must be individual, complete, correct, timely and orderly (§ 146(1) AO, German Fiscal Code). A lump sum on the bank statement is not enough for that. Every booking needs a voucher, and you keep accounting vouchers for eight years (§ 147(1) no. 4 and (3) AO).

Stripe itself is not an archive in the sense of the retention obligation. Download the fee invoices regularly and file them with your bookkeeping records, or pass them straight to your tax advisor.

How Rechnungskit saves you the month-end close

Done by hand, the month-end close with Stripe means: downloading payout reports, splitting each payout into payments, fees and refunds, matching an invoice to every payment, and finally checking whether the clearing account balances. Rechnungskit takes over most of that.

Month-end close with Stripe

By hand and with Rechnungskit

By handevery month

Invoicescreate or gather one per payment yourself

Payoutsdownload the report, split the items by hand

Feesadd up from the report and book

Refundscreate a correction document, update the booking

Reconciliationhunt for the remainder on the clearing account

With Rechnungskitautomatic

InvoicesZUGFeRD invoice from every payment, with your number range

Payoutssplit via webhook into payments, refunds and fees

Feesbooked per payout, pre-filled with the reverse charge key

Refundscancellation invoice and booking through the clearing account

Reconciliationdifferences become a task, never silently rounded away

In detail:

• Payouts. Stripe reports every payout via webhook. Rechnungskit splits it into the payments, refunds and fees it contains and shows the result per payout. If a payout does not add up to the cent, a task is created to clarify it.
• Documents. Every Stripe payment produces a validated ZUGFeRD invoice with your number range, and every refund automatically produces the cancellation invoice. Everything is stored unalterably in the GoBD archive.
• DATEV export. Payments are booked individually to a dedicated Stripe clearing account (default SKR03 1360, SKR04 1460), against the debtor of the invoice. Revenue and VAT come from the revenue batch, so nothing is counted twice. Rechnungskit books the fees per payout as one amount to incidental costs of payment transactions, with the payout reference in the booking text and pre-filled with the tax key for reverse charge on services from other EU countries. Refunds run as an exact reversal through the same clearing account, a chargeback reopens the receivable on the debtor, and the payout is booked as bank to clearing account. Your tax advisor can change all accounts.
• Chargebacks. A card dispute does not create a cancellation invoice. The item becomes open again and lands in your tasks together with the dispute fee.

What Rechnungskit does not do, so you can plan for it:

• Rechnungskit does not download or archive Stripe's monthly fee invoice. You get it from the Stripe Dashboard and give it to your tax advisor.
• Fees that Stripe deducts from your balance as a separate item rather than per payment do appear in the split payout. But the DATEV export only books the fees from payments as fees. Your tax advisor books separate items based on the Stripe invoice.
• The pre-filled tax key assumes full input VAT deduction. If you are a Kleinunternehmer, have your tax advisor adjust the fee booking.
• Rechnungskit does not create the advance VAT return itself. It is produced in DATEV from the booked batch.

The Stripe integration shows step by step how to connect Stripe in a few minutes. The path from the booking batch to the import at your tax advisor is described in exporting Stripe to DATEV, and which invoice you owe your customers from Stripe is covered under Stripe invoices.