PAYMENT PROCESSING OPTIONS FOR EVENTS

For most events, you will want to allow registrants to pay by credit card.  Online credit card transactions are convenient for the registrant and the event planner and event planners are guaranteed to receive the money when a transaction is approved.

In some cases you may also want to allow alternative payment options such as cheque, invoice or wire payment.

1. Credit Card - Real Time Transactions

To process online credit card transactions for your events, you will need:

1. An Online Merchant Account - this is also called an e-commerce merchant account and is different than merchant accounts used for face to face, phone or mail transactions.
    
2. A Gateway Account - ePly will integrate your online form with your gateway account.  Your gateway is the connection to the various financial institutions involved in processing a transaction.  These include your bank account to deposit funds and the cardholder's account to determine if a transaction should be approved or declined.

When you open an online merchant account, your account provider may also set you up with a gateway account or leave it up to you to choose one.

ePly is a PCI (payment card industry) compliant online event registration system that can integrate with most gateways, but to be sure, simply provide us with the name of the gateway and we will confirm compatibility.

If you need to open new merchant or gateway accounts we can provide you with some recommendations or discuss offering the use of ePly's accounts.

Process For Approving A Credit Card Transaction

The automated process of approving or declining a credit card transaction is approximately 3-5 seconds long. It happens like this:

1. The registration form is filled out and the event registrant clicks "submit".
2. The credit card data is securely sent to the payment gateway.
3. The payment gateway passes the transaction details to the merchant account holder's bank's processor.
4. The transaction details are then submitted to the Credit Card Network (CCN), a network of financial institutions that manage the processing, clearing and settlement of credit card transactions.
5. The CCN sends the transaction details to the event registrant's credit card issuer (bank).
6. The event registrant's bank approves or declines the transaction and sends the details back to the CCN.
7. The CCN sends the details back to the merchant account holder's bank's processor.
8. The merchant account holder's bank's processor sends the details back to the gateway.
9. The gateway saves the results and sends them back to ePly.
10. The ePly system displays the approved or declined message to the registrant, generates and emails a receipt and saves the results in the event database (ePly does not save the credit card details).
11. The event registrant's bank sends the funds to the CCN which passes them to the merchant account holder's bank.
12. The merchant account holder receives the funds in their bank account 1 - 2 business days after the transaction takes place.

2. Cheque/Invoice

When you offer to pay by cheque or request an invoice option on your form, here is what happens:

1. The event registrant fills out the form and chooses to pay by cheque, then clicks submit.
2. The ePly system records the data in the event database and sends an email invoice to the event registrant containing instructions on how much to pay and where to mail the payment.
3. When the Event Planner receives the payment, they will record it in the ePly system to track amounts paid and amounts still outstanding.
    

3. PayPal

If you’d like to offer Paypal as a form of payment, the process is registering is the same as cheque and credit card. However, after confirming the registration, the ePly system will display a link to take the event registrant to the PayPal website to complete their payment.

The ePly system will also email payment instructions to the event registrant in case they decide to make their payment at a later time.

After the payment has been received, the Event Planner manually records the payments received via PayPal in the event database to track amounts collected and outstanding.
 

4. Wire Transfer, Money Order, Cash, etc.

All other offline payment methods work in a similar way to paying by cheque.  The amount a registrant owes is recorded in the event database, the registrant receives an email with instructions on how to make their payment and the Event Planner records the payment once it's received.