| Online
Payment The
Membership Management System is equipped to handle online payments
for new member dues, renewal dues, event registration fees, donations,
and store purchases. Online payments require that your organization
has a credit card merchant account or Paypal account. If you do
not have one of these, we can assist you in setting one up.
Merchant
Accounts via Payment Gateway
Although
the topic of payment gateways can be a little complex, for our purposes,
think of a payment gateway as the 'glue' between the MMS system
and your merchant account and/or bank account.
On
the plus side, a credit card merchant account is probably easier
to use (for the end user- the new member or event registrant in
this case). However, the costs involved can be prohibitive for some
organizations.
To
use a credit cart merchant account, you will want to talk to your
financial institution or merchant account provider, and ask if they
use one of our supported gateways. We currently support:
If
you have a different gateway you need to use, let us know. We typically
can integrate a new gateway in 2-3 hours (billable).
Costs
involved will vary from provider to provider, so if you don't have
a merchant account, you may want to shop around to find an offer
that will reflect the nature of your transactions. For example if
you have a high volume of low-cost transactions, you may want to
look for lower transaction fees. If the opposite, you may want to
look for lower 'discount rates' (%-based fees).
Once
your merchant account provider has your gateway set up, you will
want to contact Vieth Consulting to assist you in integration and
run a few tests to verify everything is working correctly.
PayPal
For
organizations who want to save money and if your transaction volume
is low, PayPal is an excellent
option.
On
the down side, PayPal adds a
little more indirection for the end user (the new member or event
registrant). They will be leaving the MMS web pages, and be processing
their transaction on the paypal website. This can be confusing to
some. Also, PayPal will prompt the payor to log-in, and if non-paypal
users don't see the "click here if not a member" button,
this can cause confusion as well.
But,
it is a valid option for many groups who have low-volume transactions.
To
set-up PayPal, you will need to create a paypal account for your
organization. Ideally, you should set it up with an organization-based
email address (treasurer@yourgroup.org). So that if the contact
people in the organization change, the email account will not have
to change.
The
account is free, but is subject to transaction fees. Go to PayPal
to find out what the current fees are.
To
hook-up the paypal account with the MMS, you will be using PayPal's
Instant Payment Notification (IPN). When you have your paypal account
established, contact Vieth Consulting for procedures on how to set-up
your PayPal account with IPN.
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