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Payment Gateways The
Membership Management System is equipped to handle online payments
for new member dues, renewal dues, and event registration fees.
This is accomplished through either
- One
of several payment gateways that allow you to connect your MMS
account with a credit card merchant account.
- Paypal
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-
Authorize.net,
Linkpoint, Yourpay, FirstData, Beanstream, Durango Direct, Virtual
Merchant (Elavon). If you have a different gateway you need to
use, let us know.
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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