Collecting Event Payments: Cards, Invoices and Wire Transfers

If your event sells to individuals, card payment is nearly all of it. If it sells to organisations, you will lose registrations without an invoice option — not because people will not pay, but because their finance department cannot.

The three methods, and who needs them

• Card / debit. Immediate, reconciled automatically, costs 2–3%. The default for individuals and small organisations.
• Invoice. A purchase order, a payment term and a finance contact. Essential for universities, government and larger companies — for many of them a card is genuinely not available.
• Wire / bank transfer. Common for international registrations and large group bookings, where card limits get in the way.

Offering only cards quietly excludes exactly the delegates whose tickets are the most expensive.

Invoices need a process, not just a button

An invoice option without rules becomes a list of unpaid registrations two days before the doors open. Decide up front:

• A minimum value — below it, card only.
• A payment term, and a cut-off date after which invoicing closes and everyone pays by card.
• Whether an unpaid invoice holds a place. State it on the ticket page.
• Who chases, and when. Two reminders and a final notice, scheduled rather than remembered.

Partial payments have one good use

A deposit that secures a place for an expensive ticket, with a balance due by a date. It helps attendees who are budgeting across quarters, and it turns "I'll decide later" into a commitment. What it is not is an instalment plan you will have to police — keep it to two payments with a clear final date.

Count the fees properly

Payment fees apply to the gross, including the part you refund. Build 2–3% into the budget from the start rather than discovering it in reconciliation. If you pass fees on to attendees, say so at the point the total is shown, not on the receipt.

Reconciliation is where the week goes

The painful version: a payments dashboard in one tab, a registration list in another, and a spreadsheet mapping them by name. The tolerable version: payments recorded against the registration, so a paid registration is a state in one system and the report is a report rather than an investigation.

Whatever platform you use, check that it records the method, the reference and the status against the attendee. It is the difference between an afternoon and a fortnight.

Write the refund rule before you need it

Refunds, transfers, and what happens if the event moves. One paragraph, on the ticket page, agreed at checkout. See writing a refund policy.

Gathervo handles cards through Stripe, invoices, wire transfers and partial payments against the same registration record. See the plans or start free.