Besides or instead of the standard credit card payment methods, that can be cleared immediately, you can optionally allow the buyers to pay using any other method. You can allow the buyers to pay using any money-transfer service, such as Zelle, Venmo, Wise, Standard bank transfer or even paying cash at a retail location.
Why offer these payment methods
- Some of these methods have lower or no processing fee
- Some of these methods do not allow charge-backs (disputes)
- If you are offering service in a country that credit cards are not very common or none of our supported payment processors offer service in that country
Disadvantages
- Unlike credit cards, these methods do not clear immediately; which means the buyer needs to make the payment, wait for the payment to be transferred and cleared and then come back to finalize their purchase. This may take between a few minutes or a few days depending on the transfer method. During this time, there is a chance that the tickets or the desired seats are sold out.
- Since these methods do not offer automated verifications or refunds, some level of manual work, customer support or verification may be required on your side.
- It is not as convenient for the buyers as paying with a credit card or PayPal.
Set Up:
- Go to Control Panel > Account & Settings > Payment Processor > Zelle, Venmo, Bank Transfer, Other.
- Enter a name for this payment method that describes what payment option(s) are available. The buyer will see this name on the checkout page and can select it as the payment method.
- Enter the payment method(s) description. When the buyer selects this payment method, they will see the payment method description. The description should explain to the buyer all the payment options and all the details the buyer needs to make such payment. If you are offering multiple options, provide instruction for each option. The description must include any account number, phone number, email address, or physical address that the buyer needs to make the payment. It can optionally include QR codes that the buyer can scan to easily make the payment.
- When the payment is made, it should be verified and the payment should be recorded in the system, so the buyer's account gets credited for the payment amount.
- Next, the buyer can add the tickets they need to their shopping cart and proceed to the checkout page, where they will see their account's credit (balance), and they can make their purchase using the credit.
The payment verification and applying the credit to the buyer's account can be done in 2 methods. Manual or Automatic. In either method, we need the buyer's email address, the same email address that the buyer uses to make the purchase, to apply the credit to the correct user. So, your instruction should ask the buyer to provide their email address in the memo of their payment.
Manual
After receiving the payment, verify that the payment is actually made.
Then go to 'Control Panel > Account & Setting > User Manager'. Look up the user by their email address and hit search.
In the search result, click on the 'money' icon to record the payment.
Record the payment to give credit to the user. You can check the users balance using the 'History & Balance' icon.
You can now notify the buyer that the credit is applied and they can now make their purchase.
Automatic
Since these payment methods do not provide any API, we need to rely on the payment confirmation email, that is sent from your financial institute, to apply credit to the correct user. The confirmation email must be sent to a certain address and must include the payment amount and the memo or comment that the buyer puts in.
In this method, the system provides you with a secret email address.
You should configure your bank, Zelle, Venmo, or any other financial service you are using to send a copy of any payment confirmation to this email address. This can be configured in the notification area of your financial institute dashboard.
The system will instruct the buyer to put certain code in the memo of their payment.
When the confirmation email arrives, the system automatically processes the email and applies the credit to the user's balance.
The system then sends an email to the buyer, notifying them that the credit is now applied to their balance and that they can make their purchase now.
If an email is not successfully processed for any reason, you will receive an email with the error details, so you can take action and potentially apply the credit manually.
Automatic Method Security
To avoid any fraud or mistakes:
- Keep the provided email address secret and do not share with buyers.
- We only process the emails if they are sent from the list of authorized senders that you provide. You should provide a list of valid email addresses that your financial institute(s) send the confirmation emails from. If you are offering multiple methods, such as Zelle and Venmo, you should add all the email addresses those systems use to send emails. In other words, if the email is forwarded, re-sent, or send from a different email address, the system considers that as tampered and does not process the payment.
- If a payment is processed, a copy of the confirmation email is sent to you so that you can verify and stop any potential mistakes or frauds.
- Make sure that your financial institute only sends ONE confirmation email per payment.
- On a regular basis, report all the payments that are automatically created and cross-check them with the report from your bank.
- Since these financial institutes do not provide API or methods to securely verify the payments, it is important that you regularly check the processed payments and take action if something is not correct. If necessary, you can reverse the recorded payment, or void the purchased tickets.
Reporting:
All payments, both the ones created automatically or the ones manually recorded, can be reported from Control Panel > Reports > Payments.
