Frequently asked questions

CargoPay is a shipment management platform for European road freight. The shipment is the record everything else is built from: you enter a load once, and the transport documents, the dock appointment and the payment are all generated from that same record instead of being typed again in three places. Payment is part of it, but it is one stage of the job rather than the whole product.

Six things, in the order a load happens: find it on the freight or truck boards, agree a price through a request and bids, run the shipment itself, produce the eCMR and the regulatory documents, get paid, and give the truck a named slot at the bay. How the shipment record connects them is the shortest explanation of why this is one platform and not six tools.

No. Each part stands on its own. You can run shipments and never post to a board, issue eCMRs for loads you sourced elsewhere, or open your loading bays for booking without moving any freight through the platform. Using more of it means less retyping, but nothing forces the whole chain on you, and you are never billed for a part you do not touch.

Carriers and shippers operating in the European road freight market. Brokers and forwarders register as shippers. Every participant completes verification before the platform opens, and both small operators and large fleets are welcome provided they meet those requirements.

Two boards. The freight exchange lists loads looking for a truck, and the truck exchange lists capacity looking for a load. Carriers and shippers can both browse both boards; what differs is what each can post. Browsing costs nothing.

A shipper posts a transport request describing the load, and carriers respond with bids. The roles do not reverse: shippers ask, carriers offer. Posting the request carries a fee, and so does each bid, which is what keeps both sides of the board serious.

No. A shipment is created directly, and the boards are simply one way of filling it. If you already know who is moving the load, create the shipment, invite the carrier, and skip the board entirely. The record is the same either way.

It means the shipment is the source, not a folder. The eCMR takes its parties and addresses from the shipment. The dock appointment attaches to it. The payment request is raised against it. Correct the delivery address once and everything generated afterwards is correct, which is the difference between one system and several that happen to share a spreadsheet.

The shipment moves through its own status lifecycle, and some states deliberately stop accepting edits: once a load has moved and been documented, its record is evidence and no longer a draft. What you can still change at any moment depends on the state it is in, and the platform tells you rather than silently discarding the change.

Yes. Fleet records and driver logs live alongside the shipments they are used on, so the truck on the eCMR is the truck in your fleet rather than a plate someone typed. Registering a vehicle carries a one-off fee; keeping it on the fleet afterwards does not.

The electronic consignment note (eCMR), and the eFTI regulatory set including Spain's DeCA. All of them are generated from the shipment record rather than filled in separately. The transport documents page covers what each one is and when you need it.

It is signed electronically by the parties to the consignment, through a qualified signature provider rather than by us. The platform is provider-agnostic: the signing layer is a contract that different providers plug into, so the choice of provider is an operational decision and not a rewrite. Each party signs in their own right and the document records who signed and when.

DeCA is Spain's electronic consignment declaration, and it becomes mandatory on 5 October 2026 for the road transport it covers. If you run Spanish legs, you need it from that date. CargoPay generates it from the shipment you already created.

It turns your loading bays into a bookable calendar, so arriving trucks hold a named slot instead of joining a queue and your yard runs the day from one board. The DockPass page shows how it works from both sides.

No, and they are not charged either. The booking fee is charged to the site that owns the bay, which is deliberate: the value of a scheduled yard belongs to the site, so the site pays for it and the carrier simply books. That is what makes it realistic to ask every inbound truck to take a slot.

Traditional freight invoicing separates operations from finance: you complete the haul, send an invoice, and wait, often 30 to 60 days. Here the payment terms are attached to the shipment and agreed before the goods move, and in several of the workflows the money is secured at that point too. In those workflows there is nothing left to collect after delivery, and no cash flow gap sitting on top of it.

Card payments through Stripe, including 3D Secure where the issuer requires it. Payouts reach the bank account you connect during Stripe onboarding, in the currency of the account.

Yes. Immediate payment, an authorization hold released on delivery, and deposit plus balance are all available, and the choice is per shipment rather than a setting you make once. A new company and a customer of ten years do not need the same terms.

The party raising the payment request proposes it, and the other party accepts it before the load moves. It is a commercial agreement between the two of you; the platform records and enforces what you agreed rather than dictating it.

Yes, across the EU and beyond, with EU VAT handled on the documents. CargoPay adds no cross-border surcharge of its own. Stripe does charge more for non-EEA cards and for currency conversion, and those rates are set by Stripe: the pricing page lists the current ones.

You pay per action, and only for actions you take. Posting a transport request is €19, a bid is €3, and an eCMR, an eFTI or DeCA document, a vehicle registration and a dock booking are €1 each. Captured payments carry 1%. Each price is charged to one side: the shipper pays to post, the carrier pays to bid, and a dock booking is charged to the site that owns the bay rather than to the truck that books it. The pricing page is the full list, with who pays each one and a worked month.

No. There is no subscription, no licence per user, and no minimum to reach. You add as many colleagues to your company as you need without paying per seat, and a month in which you move nothing costs you nothing.

€799, once. It pays for the verification review: a person checks your documents against official registries, validates your VAT number and sets up your payout account. It is real work performed once, which is why it sits in the same price list as everything else rather than being called a membership.

You top it up, and each action draws down from it. The charge happens in the same transaction as the action, so if the balance will not cover it the action does not go through and no debt accumulates. Each charge is tied to the exact document, bid or booking it paid for, and retrying something that already went through does not charge you twice.

Stripe charges its own card processing fee on top of ours, directly, and it depends on the payer's card. Because Stripe sets those rates and can change them, they are listed in one place only: the pricing page.

Because the value of a closed network is that the company on the other end of the load is real. Freight fraud generally works by impersonating a legitimate haulier, and checking documents against official registries before anyone joins is what stops that at the door rather than after a load disappears.

Company registration proof, operating credentials and licences, insurance, and identification for an authorised representative, with the exact set depending on your jurisdiction and what you do. The required documentation page lists them in full and explains how to send them.

Typically 2 to 5 business days from complete documentation. It runs in two stages: our compliance team reviews your documents, and then Stripe verifies your identity and payout account through its own onboarding. Your account activates when that second stage finishes, and you receive a welcome email with temporary login credentials.

Register as a carrier or as a shipper, pay the one-time verification fee, and send your documents. Have them ready before you begin: the fee is not refundable if registration is cancelled because the documentation never arrived or was incomplete.

Card data never reaches our servers: payments run through Stripe, which is PCI DSS Level 1 certified, and we hold references rather than card numbers. The platform is GDPR compliant, access is role-based, and each organisation can see only its own data.

The set of companies that have completed verification. It is not a badge on a profile, it is the condition of being on the platform at all, which is why a company you meet on a board here has already been checked.

No, and we will not claim otherwise. Verification establishes that a company is real, registered and licensed; it does not underwrite its solvency or its conduct. What protects a specific load is the payment workflow you choose for it, which is exactly why holding funds before the goods move is offered.

That depends on the workflow you agreed. Funds held under an authorization are already secured before the load moves, which is the point of using one. Where payment was left until after delivery, the platform gives you the documented record of what was agreed and what was delivered, but the commercial recovery is yours.

The shipment record, the signed eCMR and the payment history are all attached to the same load, so what was agreed, what moved and what was signed for can be established from one place. Our support team can help you assemble that evidence. We do not arbitrate commercial disputes between two companies.