Event Payments: From Method Selection to Full Automation
An efficient payment system is key to your event's success. Discover methods that streamline the ticket purchasing process and save you time.
An efficient payment system is key to your event's success. Discover methods that streamline the ticket purchasing process and save you time.
What Payment Methods Do Today's Attendees Expect?
Remember when the only option was a bank transfer and confirmation by traditional mail? Those days are gone, and today's event attendees have much higher expectations regarding payments.
From our observations, today's participants primarily expect:
Fast Online Payments
Instant transfers and online payment systems (known as pay-by-links) are now standard. They allow participants to pay within seconds without leaving the registration process. Moreover, as an organizer, you receive immediate payment confirmation, eliminating the need for manual verification of transfers.
Payment Card Options
Credit and debit cards are the second most popular choice, especially among international attendees. For foreign guests, this is often the only acceptable payment method, as they don't have access to local banking systems.
Digital Wallet Systems
Solutions such as PayPal, Apple Pay, or Google Pay are gaining popularity, especially among younger participants and those registering via mobile devices. With one click, they can authorize payment without entering card details or logging into their bank.
Corporate Flexibility
For corporate participants, the ability to receive a proforma invoice and make a payment via traditional transfer is crucial. Companies often have accounting procedures that require prior approval of expenses and cannot use instant payments.
Case study: When organizing a technology conference, we noticed that by offering all the above payment methods, we increased the completed registration rate by 24% compared to the previous edition, where we only offered traditional transfers and card payments.
Direct Sales or Through an Intermediary? A Comparison Worth Knowing
When selecting a payment system, you must make a fundamental decision: do you want to handle payments yourself, or is it better to use the services of an intermediary?
Benefits of Direct Sales
Complete process control — you influence every element of the payment process, from selected methods to communication with participants.
Lower fees — you eliminate the additional margin of the intermediary, which can bring significant savings with a large number of transactions.
Immediate access to funds — money goes directly to your account without waiting for a transfer from the intermediary.
Challenges of Direct Sales
Accounting responsibilities — you must issue invoices, monitor payments, and maintain appropriate documentation yourself.
Need for integration with payment gateways — this requires technical knowledge or cooperation with a registration system provider.
Transaction security responsibility — although most of this burden rests with payment gateway providers, you as the organizer must ensure compliance with data protection regulations.
When Should You Consider an Intermediary?
Selling through an intermediary (e.g., ticket sales platforms) makes sense when:
- You're organizing a small, one-time event and don't want to invest in payment infrastructure
- You don't have resources for accounting and invoice management
- Your event targets a wide audience, and the intermediary offers additional promotional channels
In practice, for larger events (B2B, industry-specific, international), direct sales provide more flexibility and independence. Especially when accompanied by good automation.
How Does a Registration System Automate the Payment Process?
Modern registration systems like CONREGO offer much more than just collecting participant data. They provide a complete solution that automates the entire payment process from purchase to issuing accounting documents.
Payment Gateway Integrations
A professional registration system should offer ready-made integrations with popular payment gateways such as Stripe, PayPal, Paynow, PayU, Przelewy24 or Tpay. This way, you don't have to program connections yourself — everything works immediately after configuration.
Automatic Invoice Generation and Delivery
This is precisely the area where a professional registration system can save you the most time and stress. Instead of manually issuing each invoice, the system should:
- Automatically generate invoices after payment confirmation
- Email documents to participants
- Offer options for issuing corrective invoices or duplicates
From an organizer's experience: For a conference with 500 attendees, automated invoicing saves an average of 40-50 hours of accounting work and practically eliminates the risk of errors in documents.
What About VAT?
It's also worth mentioning taxes. The CONREGO system allows for issuing VAT invoices in your chosen currency, but within one subscription, only one VAT rate can be applied. If you're organizing an event exempt from VAT – there's no problem. However, if your event combines different rates, it's worth consulting your accountant about the sales structure beforehand.
From an organizer's experience: Participation in an event on Polish territory – even by a foreign attendee – is not an export of services, so don't automatically issue 0% invoices. This is a common mistake.
How to Streamline the Payment Process and Increase Conversion?
Technology alone isn't everything — it's also important how you design the payment process to be user-friendly and maximize the chances of purchase completion.
Price Transparency
Avoid hidden fees and price surprises at the final stage. All additional costs (e.g., service fees or VAT) should be clearly communicated from the beginning of the registration process.
Minimizing Steps to Completion
Every additional step in the payment process increases the risk of cart abandonment. Therefore, it's worth:
- Limiting the number of screens before making a payment
- Implementing automatic filling of invoice data based on information retrieved from business registers
Strategy for Reminding About Incomplete Payments
Even the best-designed process will have a certain percentage of incomplete transactions. An effective strategy should include:
- Automatic reminder emails about unfinished registration
- The ability to return to the payment process via a unique link
Practical tip: According to our data, a well-designed reminder system for incomplete payments can recover up to 15-20% of potentially lost registrations.
Summary: The Key to Trouble-Free Event Payments
As you can see, a professional approach to payments is much more than just choosing payment methods. It's a comprehensive strategy that includes:
- Offering diverse payment methods tailored to participants' expectations
- Making an informed choice between direct sales and using intermediaries
- Utilizing automation to streamline payment and invoicing processes
- Ensuring compliance with tax requirements
- Optimizing the process for maximum conversion
With modern registration systems like CONREGO, most of these processes can be automated, allowing you to focus on what's most important — creating a valuable experience for participants.
If you're considering improving payment processes for your event, we encourage you to take advantage of a free consultation with our specialists who will help you choose the optimal solution for your specific case.
Looking for more information on event organization? Check out our other articles in the Knowledge Base section or download the complete guide "Event Organization from A to Z".
About the author
Joanna Chrościechowska
Managing Partner at CONREGO. She specializes in educating event organizers and improving communication with participants. She writes about how to simplify the work of event managers and create processes that enhance attendee satisfaction and the overall effectiveness of event operations.