Accepting Payments

How to Accept Payments with Event Smart

Today you’ll learn how to accept payments with Event Smart. 

Event Smart supports a handful of the popular payment gateways. To accept payments, you must have an account with one of these payment gateways, and an active subscription to the individual payment gateway feature is also needed to use a payment gateway on your Event Smart site.

These gateways can be setup by going to your Event Smart dashboard --> Event Smart –> Payment Methods. Your screen will show available payment gateways for your account that you subscribed to, similar to the image below:

In the above image we see six of the available payment gateways for Event Smart: Authorize.net AIM, Bank, Check, Invoice, PayPal Pro, PayPal Standard, and Stripe. A green gear icon means that this payment gateway is currently activated for Event Smart. If you see a white gear, this means that this payment gateway for Event Smart is deactivated and you can activate it by clicking on the name of the payment gateway and then clicking on the green activate button.

When a payment gateway is activated, you’ll be presented with various options for configuring your payment gateway. You can refer to the help tab on the Payment Methods page in Event Smart to view specific instructions for your payment gateway. After configuring your payment gateway, be sure to save changes by clicking on the blue Update Settings button. Listed below are some of the popular payment gateways that can be used with Event Smart:

You can choose from a variety of payment gateways integrations with your own account. Here are some examples of payment services that are supported:

• Stripe (recommended)
• PayPal Express
• PayPal Express Smart Buttons
• PayPal Pro
• Payflow Pro
• Authorize.net AIM
• Authorize.net SIM
• Braintree
• iDeal/Mollie
• Sage Pay

There are also several offline payment methods available if you don't accept payments online:

• Bank Draft
• Check
• Invoice (included for free)

Learn more about the Payment Settings.

Offsite Payments vs. Onsite Payments

Event Smart offers options to accept payments on your site and offsite. Lets begin by using twos examples to illustrate the primary difference between offsite payments and onsite payments.

Example A (offsite payments): Arrive at site –> Browse to events pages –> Click on event that you want to register for –> Select your ticket options –> Enter your attendee information and continue to payment options –> Select an offsite payment option and be transferred to payment processor to complete payment –> Return to website to finish registration.

Example B (onsite payments): Arrive at site –> Browse to events pages –> Click on event that you want to register for –> Select your ticket options –> Enter your attendee information and continue to payment options –> Select an onsite payment option and complete payment and finish registration.

The registration process for a website with onsite payments appears similar to Example A but take note of what happens towards the end of the steps for Example B. We see that an attendee remains onsite for the payment process which means a quicker registration.

PayPal Standard is an example of an offsite payment gateway. When you select to pay with PayPal Standard, you are temporarily brought to a secure PayPal.com page to complete payment. Afterwards you are brought back to the website to finish up registration.

Authorize.net AIM is an example of an onsite payment gateway because the entire payment process takes place directly on your site.

Pro-tip: Offer multiple payment methods to make payments convenient for your customers.

Next: Registration Forms