Online Payments

[Alex2614]

We are starting to dabble into the world of online payments. We are starting by selling T-shirts for our off-season event online (by the way, WVROX August 5-6), but we would like to start using online systems for our team shirts, hotel payments, etc. Everything needs to link directly to PayPal because of how our bank works. We think we have the off-season shirt store worked out, but expanding into other team payments is getting tricky to figure out.

A bit of background: For regular season events, we don't charge students or mentors for hotel rooms, but if families want to come, they pay their share of the room (i.e. if a non-mentor parent wants to room with just their child, they pay for 3/4 of the room). For off-season events (and sometimes the championship, depending on our cash flow), we ask everyone to pay. Because of this, the costs are different for everybody for each event. Additionally, we also usually do some kind of box lunch at the regionals, which we ask folks to pay for. There may be other things in the future, but at the moment, we are handling cash and checks from our members constantly, and it's starting to become a burden.

Do teams out there utilize systems like this for team payments? For hotel payments, I was thinking about some kind of Google forms/Woofoo kind of thing, linking to PayPal, so we can invoice different people separately, since the totals will be different.

What are everyone's thoughts? What have been your successes? Failures?

[GreyingJay]

My team hasn't looked at any of this yet, but for the summer camp I volunteer with, we have had good success with Square Payments. You may have seen the little device they sell (technically it's free after credits) that plugs into your smartphone or tablet and lets you accept credit card payments. The account links directly to your bank account so it does the same job as PayPal.

Camp uses it for discrete merchandise sales (T-shirts, water bottles) as well as for arbitrary purchase amounts such as donations or payments for silent auctions.

[rsisk]

For our summer camps, we send a Paypal invoice which contains a button for the camper to click and pay with CC or eCheck.

For an online store, you might checkout something like Etsy.

[cbale2000]

I setup a PayPal payment system as an option for other teams to pay registration costs for the off-season event we host every year. It works pretty good and the fee to use it is pretty low. It also has the nice added feature of being compatible with a "Square" card reader so it can be used as an on-site payment option as well.

Overall PayPal is great for single-item purchases, but harder to setup for multi-item shopping carts; for our purposes it works fine though. Our team has never had the need to use PayPal for any other team functions however, as we don't charge team members for anything except T-Shirts (which are optional to buy, and loaned out otherwise), and all those transactions are handled in person with cash or check.

[sanddrag]

I've used Stripe successfully in the past. It has Squarespace integration (not to be confused with Square) but Squarespace has recently become quite expensive.

Stripe has reasonable rates that are per-transaction only, with no ongoing monthly costs. However, I think they lack the mobile reader device that Square has. I haven't looked into it much.

[Chris Fultz]

We use paypal for IRI and IndyRAGE payments.

Paypal has a good invoicing process where you can detail the charges and submit a single invoice with multiple items. When someone pays, it automatically marks the invoice paid. If they pay with check or cash, you can go into paypal and enter the payment.

For the IRI charity auction, we use Square. Easy to use a credit or debit card and you can provide a receipt by text or email.

All of these services charge a fee. I think Paypal is 3% unless the paying person has a paypal account they are using (instead of a credit card). 3% doesn't sound like much, but it can add up quickly. If you use Square into a paypal account, you get fees twice. We use these because payment is much easier for teams.

[GreyingJay]

These fees are actually pretty reasonable if you consider the alternative, which is to set up your own account with a merchant services company so you can take credit or debit card payments. These usually have a monthly rental fee for terminal hardware, ON TOP of the credit card processing fees which are still in the 1-2% range.

FRC teams are probably low volume or seasonal so the pay-as-you-go nature of services like PayPal or Square are ideal for our situations.

[Scott L.]

https://www.oscommerce.com/

integrates with paypal.

Square is good option for on site payments. the reader is free for the regular swipe reader if you order right from square, and the chip reader is $60, which also includes a a wipe reader. the chip reader connects through bluetooth to your phone or tablet

[FrankJ]

We are using paypal. About 3% in fees depending on how payment is made. A lot easier than tracking down checks, and writing receipts. Payment trail is nice too. We factor in the fees in our budget.

[hardcopi]

Amazon payments is the way I would go. They have a square-type thing for your phone as well. Costs like $10 or $15 which they refund after you use it. Good rates and they have provisions for non-profits. You can get cash or amazon credit whenever you want.

They also integrate with most ecommerce programs. (I do this for a living and it worked really well on the last project)