.svg){kind=small}
Levy runs on a revenue-share model, which means your payout is not a fixed subscription line. It is a share of the money your riders actually pay, settled after payment processing, and rolled up from every individual ride. That design has one big advantage for you as an operator: with $0 upfront and a "you pay when riders pay" structure, Levy only earns when you earn. But it also means you need to understand the money waterfall in detail, because the difference between gross rider payments and what lands in your account is real, and getting the accounting wrong at the ride level is how operators end up overpaid one month, underpaid the next, and wrong on tax. This lesson walks the full path from a rider tapping "end ride" to a dollar in your payout, explains why Levy accounts for it one ride at a time, and shows how multi-market and multi-operator payouts stay clean.
Operator education, not professional advice
This lesson is educational and describes how Levy's revenue-share model and payout accounting work in general. It is not accounting, tax, legal, or financial advice. Sales tax treatment, revenue recognition, and payout terms vary by jurisdiction and by your specific agreement, so consult a qualified accountant or tax professional and confirm the rules with your local authorities before you rely on any figure here for filing, contracts, or planning.
The revenue-share model in one screen
Levy is a connected fleet operations platform sold turnkey: software plus vehicle sourcing, IoT, payments, and 24/7 managed support. On the payments side, the commercial model is deliberately simple to start and precise to settle.
| Plan | What you pay | Who handles payments and payouts |
|---|---|---|
| Managed (revenue share) | 20% of GMV under 100 active vehicles (no vehicle minimum); 15% of GMV at 100 to 249 active vehicles on annual or approved term | Levy runs payments, disputes, collections, and pays you your share |
| Software-Only | $14 per vehicle per month (100 to 249 active vehicles, annual commitment) | You run payments in-house |
| Enterprise | Custom (250+ vehicles, hybrid or multi-market, blended structures) | Configured to your structure |
Two more numbers anchor every Managed account:
- $250 per month platform minimum per operator, credited against your fees. If a month's fees come in under $250, Levy invoices the difference. Above $250, the minimum never applies.
- $0 upfront, with an optional $2,750 one-time White-Label add-on to publish an operator-branded app on iOS and Android. Using the Levy-branded app under "Levy Label" carries no setup fee.
This lesson focuses on the Managed plan, because that is where Levy handles the payment rail and pays you a partner share. On Software-Only you process payments in-house and simply pay the per-vehicle fee, so the payout waterfall below does not apply to you the same way. For the authoritative, current numbers across all three plans, see Levy's revenue-share pricing and plan terms.
The money waterfall: from rider payment to your payout
Your payout is the last step in a short, strict sequence. Walk it top to bottom.
Step 1: GMV (gross rider payments)
GMV is gross rider payments before taxes, government fees, refunds, and tips. That definition matters because it tells you what is inside the revenue-share base and what is not. Taxes and government fees ride through to the taxing authority, so they are never GMV. Tips belong to no one but the recipient, so they are not GMV either. Refunds are not netted out of GMV: GMV is measured gross, and a refund is recorded separately against the ride, where it flows into your payout base and tax total for the period. The fare revenue riders pay to rent your vehicles is your GMV, measured gross.
Step 2: Processing fees
Every card charge runs through Stripe, one of the nine software platforms included on every plan. Levy carries volume pricing of 2.6% + $0.20 per transaction, versus the standard 2.9% + $0.30. Operator and Levy share those processing costs proportionally, and your revenue share is calculated on net revenue after Stripe processing fees, not on the gross.
Step 3: Net revenue and your partner share
Subtract processing from GMV and you have net revenue. Your partner share is then applied to that net figure. On Managed, the partner share defaults to 80% for any operator account without an explicit value set, which is the exact complement of Levy's 20% Managed fee. That 80% is your money.
Here is a worked monthly example for a fleet doing $10,000 of GMV across 1,000 rides. Treat the GMV, ride count, and average fare as illustrative placeholders, not benchmarks: your real numbers depend on your city, fleet size, pricing, and how hard the fleet is run, so model your own in the Fleet Estimator.
| Line | Amount | How it is derived |
|---|---|---|
| GMV (gross rider payments) | $10,000.00 | Fares before tax, government fees, refunds, tips |
| Stripe processing | ($460.00) | 2.6% of $10,000 ($260) + $0.20 x 1,000 rides ($200) |
| Net revenue | $9,540.00 | GMV minus processing |
| Your partner share (80%) | $7,632.00 | 80% of net revenue |
| Levy share (20%) | $1,908.00 | 20% of net revenue |
| Platform minimum check | No top-up | Levy's share ($1,908) already exceeds the $250 minimum |
Notice what the volume pricing is worth to you. At the standard 2.9% + $0.30, processing on this same month would be $590 instead of $460, a $130 difference. Because you keep 80% of net, roughly $104 of that saving stays on your side of the split every month, before you have done anything except run on Levy's rail.
One caution on reading this number: the $7,632 partner share is what Levy pays out to your account, not your profit. It is a top-line figure that still has to cover everything you carry as the operator: vehicle cost or financing, insurance, city permits, storage and charging, field labor and rebalancing, marketing, theft and damage reserve, and your own taxes. To understand what you actually keep, subtract those costs from the partner share. This lesson covers the Levy side of the waterfall (GMV to net revenue to partner share); your operating costs sit below it.
Two lenses on the same deal: GMV headline vs net-revenue settlement
The plan headline quotes Levy's fee as "20% of GMV." The books settle on net revenue after processing, with both parties sharing processing proportionally. These are two views of one arrangement, not two separate charges. In the example above, the "20% of GMV" headline would read $2,000, while Levy's actual take settles at $1,908 because processing is shared before the split. Read the headline to understand the plan, and read the net-revenue waterfall to understand your payout. When a number has to be exact, the pricing page governs.
Why ride-level accounting keeps payouts and tax accurate
Every figure above looks tidy at the monthly level, but the monthly total is only correct if the underlying rides are correct. Levy accounts for revenue one ride at a time, and that is not a technicality. It is what keeps your payouts and your tax remittance honest.
Think of each ride as a small, self-contained ledger. It records the fare (its contribution to GMV), the tax collected, any tip, the processing fee, and any refund or fare adjustment applied to that specific ride. Your monthly payout is the roll-up of thousands of those per-ride ledgers, not a single top-down number someone types in. Three things fall out of that design:
- Tax stays separate and stays correct. Because tax is excluded from GMV by definition and is tracked on the ride that generated it, the tax you collected from riders is never mistaken for revenue you and Levy split. It is remitted to the taxing authority, and your payout base never absorbs it.
- Refunds land where they belong. A refund is not a generic account credit. It is an adjustment against the ride it came from, recorded separately from GMV, and it flows the correction into both the payout base and the tax total for the right period. GMV stays gross; the refund moves as its own entry, not as a smaller original sale. Refund a ride and forget to tie it to the ride, and you would overstate the partner share you are owed and misreport tax.
- Corrections are auditable. When a fare is adjusted, the change is visible on the ride record, so a month's payout can always be reconstructed from its rides. There is no mystery adjustment sitting on top of the total.
The ride is the source of truth, not the balance
The failure mode to avoid is treating a wallet balance or an account total as the place to "fix" money. If a rider is owed money back, the correction belongs on the ride: adjust the fare or record the refund against that ride, and let the payout and tax numbers follow. Skip the ride and credit a balance directly and you corrupt the very roll-up your payout is built from. Every refund and fare adjustment on Levy is designed to run against the ride first, with any wallet credit as a downstream consequence.
This is also the quiet reason a revenue-share model beats a flat franchise fee for a growing operator: your cost scales exactly with the rides you actually completed and kept, ride by ride, with nothing owed on rides that refunded or never happened. If you are weighing that structure against a franchise's fixed upfront and ongoing costs, the electric scooter franchise cost guide breaks down the two approaches side by side.
Multi-operator and multi-market payouts
Run one city and the waterfall above is your whole story. Run several markets, or operate as a partner under a larger structure, and payouts have to stay separated by entity or the accounting collapses into one blurry number.
Levy handles this by metering each operator account (each subaccount) on its own books. Every account carries:
- Its own GMV, from only the rides that belong to it.
- Its own net revenue, after that account's own processing.
- Its own partner share, which defaults to 80% when no explicit value is set, and can be set per account for structures where the split differs.
- Its own tax, tracked on that account's rides and remitted for that account's jurisdiction.
Because the split lives at the account level and the revenue lives at the ride level, a multi-market operator gets a correct, independent payout for each market rather than one pooled figure that hides which city is carrying which. If you run a partner network, each partner's share is computed against their own rides, so nobody is paid out of someone else's GMV.
Set the share explicitly for non-standard structures
The 80% partner share is a default, not a lock. If your agreement uses a different split for a specific market or partner, have that value set explicitly on the account rather than relying on the default. That way the payout math and any downstream reporting reflect the real deal from the first ride, and you avoid a true-up later.
Payout cadence and the monthly close
Managed payouts run on a recurring billing cycle rather than trickling out ride by ride, because netting is what makes the numbers trustworthy. Levy is running payments, refunds, disputes, chargebacks, and collections on your behalf, and all of those have to settle against the same period before your share is final.
Rides accrue through the period
Every completed ride books its fare, tax, tip, and processing fee to its own record as it happens. Your GMV and net revenue build up ride by ride across the cycle.
Adjustments settle against the period
Refunds and fare adjustments pull the right amounts back out of the rides they belong to. Disputes and chargebacks resolve. Collections and dunning recover what can be recovered. All of it lands on the correct rides before the close.
Net revenue and your share are computed
GMV minus processing gives net revenue, and your partner share (80% by default) is applied to that net figure for the period.
The platform minimum is checked
If Levy's fee for the month is under $250, the difference is invoiced so the platform minimum is met. If your volume already put Levy's fee above $250, the minimum is moot.
Your payout settles
Your share is paid out for the period, and the ride-level records stand as the audit trail behind the number.
The exact settlement timing and any holdback terms are set in your agreement and configured to your account, so confirm those specifics with your Levy contact rather than assuming a fixed interval. What does not change is the shape: accrue at the ride level, settle net at the period, pay the operator share.
Disputes, chargebacks, and collections are part of the payout
On Managed, Levy runs the messy back half of payments so it flows into your payout automatically instead of becoming your side project. Managed payments, the rider wallet, disputes and chargebacks, and collections and dunning are all handled for you. That matters for payout accuracy in two ways. First, a chargeback or refund reduces the same net-revenue base your share is computed on, so you are never paid a share of money that later reversed. Second, recovered funds from collections flow back through the same ride-level accounting, so a late recovery shows up in the period it settles, correctly attributed. You are not reconciling any of that by hand. It nets into the waterfall.
Frequently asked questions
Put it into practice
The revenue-share model rewards you for understanding it. Know the waterfall (GMV, then net revenue after processing, then your 80% partner share), trust that ride-level accounting keeps every payout and tax number reconstructable, and lean on Levy to run the disputes, chargebacks, and collections that would otherwise eat your week. Want to see what the numbers look like for your city, fleet size, and expected volume? Run your fleet through the estimator and watch the waterfall fill in with your own figures.