Checkout & Payment Methods

Overview

This page is for students who have drafted a booking and need to pay for it. It explains the tuitionable checkout flow end to end — the page you land on after picking a tutor, date, and time, and the three ways you can settle the amount due: a payment gateway (such as credit/debit card, PayNow, or PayPal), your wallet balance, or a free trial session that skips payment entirely.

It also covers what happens after you click pay: how Tuitionable confirms gateway payments asynchronously, and how you can start a booking as a guest without first creating a full account.

Checkout in Tuitionable is a two-stage flow. First you draft a booking (tutor, subject, slot, duration); then you land on a checkout page that holds the slot while you pay. You are never charged before you choose a payment method here.

There are two visual versions of the same checkout page, depending on where you started:

• Public checkout — /checkout/{booking}, shown when you book from a public tutor profile.
• Dashboard payment page — /student/payment/{booking}, shown when you book from inside your student dashboard.

Both accept the same booking and offer the same payment choices; only the layout and the page you return to after paying differ.

Reaching the checkout page

When you confirm a booking draft, Tuitionable reserves the slot and moves the booking into a pending_payment state, then sends you to checkout. The reservation gives you a short window to complete payment — the tutor will not be notified of your request until payment (or a wallet hold) is done.

What the checkout page shows

• An order summary: the tutor, session type (single, package, or group), subject, duration, and your selected date and time.
• The amount due, including any active promotional offer already applied to the price and any coupon discount you add.
• A live status banner reflecting the booking and payment state (awaiting payment, processing, held, awaiting tutor confirmation, or confirmed).
• A panel to edit the slot before you pay (see below).

Adjusting the slot before you pay

While a booking is unpaid, the public checkout page lets you change the date and time — and, for non-package bookings, the duration and subject — right from the order summary. This re-prices the booking to match, and the new slot is re-checked for availability before it is committed.

This in-checkout slot edit applies only to a booking that has not yet been paid. Once a booking is paid (or held), use Cancellations & Refunds instead — the student-initiated reschedule on a confirmed session is handled separately and may require your tutor's approval.

Abandoning a booking

If you decide not to pay, choose Cancel and go back. It will release the reserved slot, and mark the booking as cancelled. No charge is made.

Paying by gateway

To pay with a card or an online payment provider, use the gateway selector in the payment panel. It shows payment methods — for example, Airwallex, PayNow, bank transfer (wallet top-up), and others. Pick one and select Pay and confirm booking.

How a gateway payment flows

1. Your selection submits to Payment Gateway with the booking and chosen gateway.
2. Tuitionable creates a pending charge and asks the gateway to start the payment.
3. Depending on the provider, the gateway either opens an inline overlay on the checkout page or redirects you to a hosted payment page.
4. After you pay, the gateway returns you to /pay/callback/{gateway}, where Tuitionable verifies the result and lands you back on the right page with a success, pending, or error message.

If you start a payment and then use your browser's back button without completing it, the selector resets so you can pick a method and try again. No charge is made for an abandoned attempt.