Split Payment: The Complete Guide for Concierge Companies

What is split payment

Split payment divides each payment among several beneficiaries as soon as the funds arrive: the owner’s share, your commission and your service providers’ pay. The amounts follow rules set in advance, property by property, with no manual transfers and no chasing.

With Unlocker, each property gets a dedicated IBAN. You enter these details with booking platforms such as Airbnb or Booking, or you give them to the tenant for a lease. As soon as a payment arrives, your rules apply and every party is paid out of the same payment.

Why the path of the money matters

In the traditional flow, the guest or tenant pays the concierge company, which keeps its commission and pays out the rest. But Law No. 70-9 of January 2, 1970, known as the Hoguet Law (the 1970 French law regulating real estate professionals), reserves the operations it covers, including property management, for holders of a real estate professional license (Article 3). Receiving or holding funds in breach of this article is punishable by two years’ imprisonment and a €30,000 fine (Article 16). Even a person authorized by a license holder can neither receive nor hold funds (Article 4).

With split payment, the money doesn’t go through your account. It’s held on the books of eZyness, a licensed electronic money institution, of which Unlocker is a payment services agent, registered with the ACPR (France’s banking and insurance regulator) under No. 732183. Split payment settles the question of the flow of funds. It doesn’t replace a carte G (the French property management license) when the assignment requires one: for long-term rental, that’s what carte G delegation is for. The risks are detailed in our guide on concierge companies and the Hoguet Law: handling client funds.

Invoicing as a concierge company

Split payment changes when the money moves, not the role of the invoice. In the traditional flow, you invoice your commission after the stay, then wait for the owner to pay you. With split payment, your commission is taken from the payment itself: the invoice justifies money you’ve already received instead of asking for it.

What your invoice must include

The authorities list the mandatory details on an invoice: issue date, a unique number from a continuous chronological sequence, date of the service, identity of the provider and the customer, description of the service with its unit price excluding VAT and the applicable VAT rate (or a note of the exemption), payment date and late-payment penalties. Add the property and the period concerned: those are the two things the owner and their accountant look for first.

Since September 1, 2026, every company established in France and subject to VAT must be able to receive electronic invoices. The obligation to issue them will apply to small and medium-sized businesses and micro-businesses from September 1, 2027. The full process is detailed in our guide to making your concierge company’s invoicing easier.

Separating the flows also serves your owners. For those who fall under para-hôtellerie (a VAT regime for rentals that include hotel-like services), distinguishing the nightly rate from cleaning or linen services makes their accountant’s job easier: split payment isolates them from the moment the payment arrives. The mechanism is explained in our guide on para-hotel services and VAT recovery.

Including service providers in the split

Cleaning, linens, maintenance: your service providers’ pay is part of the property’s split rules, just like your commission and the owner’s share. At each payment, their share is calculated, set aside and paid out of the funds received.

The change is about cash advances. In the traditional flow, the concierge company pays the cleaning company between two stays, then waits for the owner’s transfer to get its costs back. With split payment, the service is paid from the stay’s money, without going through your account. One limit to know: split payment doesn’t finance anything before the funds are received. Platform payout schedules and bank delays still apply.

The shares of the owner, the concierge company and the provider are the ones you set with them: they aren’t a price list. Only the 1% excl. VAT is the split payment rate. In long-term rental, the same mechanism applies to rent: a boiler service, for example, can be included in the split for the month concerned.

All three parties gain in clarity. The provider is paid at every payment, without depending on your own commission being settled. The owner sees, in their dedicated space, the services taken into account next to the share that’s theirs: no more matching a cleaning invoice with a transfer received separately.

Setting up the split

1. 1

   Create your account

   Introduce your concierge company and choose your plan.

2. 2

   Declare owners and service providers

   Enter the beneficiaries and their details to prepare the split.

3. 3

   Set up the property

   Add the property and define the split rules for its payments.

4. 4

   Collect

   Every payment received on the property's IBAN is split according to these rules.

Bank reconciliation and payout tracking

When all stays land in the same account, you have to work out which property and which stay each transfer matches, then check that each owner received the right amount. With one IBAN per property, each payment is recognized and tied to the right property as soon as it arrives.

For rent, Unlocker matches each payment to its tenant or property and reconciles it against bank statements. You only get an alert when there’s an anomaly. How it works is presented on our page on automatic rent bank reconciliation.

The owner has nothing to do. They receive their share directly and follow their payments from their dedicated space. Amounts and rules are known in advance: questions like “why did I get less this month?” get answered without an email exchange.

In property management, the Hoguet Law requires the mandate to specify the terms for handling funds and for rendering accounts (Article 6, I). With carte G delegation, this mandate is signed by Unlocker Real Estate, which is responsible for it. Traced flows, property by property, make this accounting verifiable by the owner.

Tracking payouts is one of the tasks to structure early: see our guide on what to automate before you reach 20 properties.