Online ticketing system help

[RSS_UK]

Hello there,

We are a live music events production company currently selling its own tickets online trough PayPal but from our own website. Basically, we organize concerts with bands and different artists and performers and also club nights with Djs, etc. and we currently sell our tickets using PayPal to handle payments securely.

Since we are very unhappy with the extremely poor customer service offered by this company (PayPal) and find the fees charged to each of our transactions (tickets sold oline) a bit excesive compared to the services we are getting uin exchange from this company, we are thinking on setting up our own independent ticketing system.

First, if I´m not mistaken, we will need a SSL certificate for our website, a Merchant account and a Gateway?

I´m a bit confused so I´d appreciate some advise.

Obviously, we want to have a strong and reliable system put in place with the highest security encriptions so we can take payments trough our website, even over the phone and at the door of the different venues we work with.

Feel free to recommend your services.

Best regards

 

[Sparx]

Evening

Yes you will need of course your website in place, along with an SSL certificate, a merchant account and payment gateway.

I'd personally recommend either Cardsave.net or TotalWebSolutions a member on here, both reputable companies. Either can provide both a merchant account and payment gateway together in one package.

As for an SSL certificate, I'd recommend InstantSSL.com or Daily.co.uk.

http://www.daily.co.uk/products/ssl-certificates/index.html

http://www.instantssl.com/ssl-certificate-products/ssl-certificate-index.html

Hope that helps buddy.

 

[RSS_UK]

Thanks both for your comments.

We have a website with a check out screen that's integrated with PayPal but as mentioned before, my intention is to have my own system in place soon enough as cant deal with PayPal buyers protection leaving sellers "un protected" to many forms of fraud anymore.

I'd certainly appreciate if I could compare different companies.

First I think I will go for the SSL certificate asap and once that's sorted, then the merchant account and Payment gateway.

In regards to this, what payment gateway seems to be more trusted in the eyes of potential customers? I mean, what are the the most common companies that people would be familiar with? Sagepay?

About the SSL certificate, how does that normally ork in regards of fees? I'd go for the green bar with a paddlock to offer our customers the highest levels of security.

Please feel free to leave your comments about your own experience as they are much appreciated.

Best regards

 

[RSS_UK]

By the way David, congratulations for your position in Google!

 

[Sparx]

Hey again

In regards to the payment gateway, your best option really would be to get one that can integrate into your shopping cart rather than an external one. It would be much more user-friendly for your customers as they are not being re-directed away from your website which both Cardsave and TWS can provide I believe and makes your customer feel more at ease and in their comfort zone.

As for the SSL certificates, you pay for these annually. For the green bar and pad lock I believe these are the sort of 'premium' certs I guess you could call them that generally cost the most. But they do indeed provide the highest levels of security. For this, I would recommend 123-Reg's Extended SSL certified by GlobalSign who are one of the top security providers.

http://www.123-reg.co.uk/ssl-certificates/extended-ssl-certificates.shtml

If you want to look into Cardsave more, you could give Scott Laughland one of the Online Accounts Managers a call who could give you a quote, 01159 487619 - just quote your a UK Business Forums member and go from there.

Hope that helps buddy.

 

[RSS_UK]

Thanks again Sparxs.

Are you somehow related to this type of business if you dont mind me asking?

Will surely look into all this so thanks to pointing me in the right direction.

Best regards

 

[Sparx]

I'm related to Cardsave as I work on the Merchant Support team, just doing tech support basically for the actual physical PDQ card machines and things. I don't get any sales commissions so don't worry I've got nothing to influence me wanting to make you a customer at Cardsave, I just recommend our Online system as I know it's really reliable etc.

No probs bud.

 

[PayPoint net]

Hello there,

We are a live music events production company currently selling its own tickets online trough PayPal but from our own website. Basically, we organize concerts with bands and different artists and performers and also club nights with Djs, etc. and we currently sell our tickets using PayPal to handle payments securely.

Since we are very unhappy with the extremely poor customer service offered by this company (PayPal) and find the fees charged to each of our transactions (tickets sold oline) a bit excesive compared to the services we are getting uin exchange from this company, we are thinking on setting up our own independent ticketing system.

First, if I´m not mistaken, we will need a SSL certificate for our website, a Merchant account and a Gateway?

I´m a bit confused so I´d appreciate some advise.

Obviously, we want to have a strong and reliable system put in place with the highest security encriptions so we can take payments trough our website, even over the phone and at the door of the different venues we work with.

Feel free to recommend your services.

Best regards

Hi there

We provide an internet merchant account and payment gateway all-in-one solution for many different businesses models so this may be something that we can help you with to support you with your internet / phone payment requirements.

We treat the security of our payment systems as our number one priority and have adopted a number of security techniques to ensure that it stays that way. PayPoint.net supports all industry security initiative schemes, such as Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode, is PCI DSS Level 1 compliant and also has our own in house fraud management systems in place to help manage and reduce fraudulent transactions.

Selecting the right payment platform is key in e-commerce and could make the difference between a successful business that is trusted by its customers and one that is burdened by fraud. We have invested heavily in our resilient platform.

If you would like me to get one of our payments team to talk you through the process of whats involved and how we can support your particular business model please PM me your contact details and I can arrange a call.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Siobhan

 

[Deleted member 106254]

Don't forget you'll still have to pay fees to the credit card processing company, pay for the SSL certificate and installation and possibly fees for the merchant account so you may be better off sticking with PayPal.

 

[benseb]

Hi

We work with over 20,000 UK event promoters, many of whom have come from a similar situation. Many start events, sell them via their own website then once they outgrow this (there's a lot of admin involved), start using a third party.

Selling your own tickets has it's benefits but it can also quite quickly become a hassle - after all you need to focus on doing what you do well - organising/promoting the events!

You could look at setting up your own service, but I'd just point out a few things to consider:

1) You will need to pay for the card fees. This is usually handled by adding a 'booking fee' to the ticket price. Your card fees will probably be fairly high if dealing with lowish turnover

2) You still have to deal with all the admin of running such a service - this will only grow as your events become more popular. Think about ticket distribution, customer service, etc etc.

3) You may become a target for fraud - often smaller independant outlets dont have the bespoke fraud checking required for events, which is a hot target for card fraud

When you consider all the above, it may be worth looking at a ticket agent instead. For example, at Skiddle.com we offer a full What's On Guide to promote your event, with a built in ticket sales service. Skiddle would handle all the card payment side of things, plus customer service, ticket distribution, fraud checks, etc.

This service is entirely free of charge to you as a promoter. We make our money by adding a booking fee (approx 10%, sometimes less) to the ticket price which we charge the customer. Similar to the way Ticketmaster, etc work but we have much fairer pricing, offer much more promotion and specialise in working with smaller promoters. If you'd like some more info check out skiddle.com or call me on 0843 289 3333

Hope that helps!

Ben

 

[CharityClear]

Hi,

We should be able to help you with regards to the merchant account/payment gateway and can also offer advice on SSL certificates through our partners.

We offer one of the most competitive packages for a payment gateway in the UK and can negotiate preferable merchant account rates for you. Our system is fully PCI DSS level 1 compliant and runs from an establised platform with 99.9% uptime over the last 5 years.

All of CharityClear's profits go to charity.

Regards,

Marc Kelly
Sales Manager

 

[RSS_UK]

Thanks a lot everybody for your responses.

I can see there´s plenty of companies offering the full package and just need to compare in between the different options and rates.

Once again, thanks for your help and for offering your services.

Best regards

 

[jonny_white]

Hey RSS_UK

Are you still looking for help with your ticketing system? We might be able to help.

We supply ticketing systems to venues and promoters on a subscription basis. It integrates with your website and we don't charge booking fees. We think this is much more cost effective than using a ticket agency, or commissioning a custom built system.

We use PayPal by default because it's easy but if you have a specific payment gateway you want to use please talk to us.

Our website is at www [dot] tickettailor [dot] com or you can call us on 0207 193 7027.

Thanks
Jonny

 

[RSS_UK]

Thanks all for your help.

Well, I can say that I've had it with PayPal UK and its extremely poor service to sellers who have no protection whatsoever but at the same time get ripped off in transaction fees.

I am determined to get the SSL certificate, Merchant account and payment gateway up and running asap.

Could anyone advise on how long may this process take in that order? If I get the whole payment gateway package I wont be needing an SSL certificate or will I also need to get it?

Thanks a lot

 

[CharityClear]

Thanks all for your help.

Well, I can say that I've had it with PayPal UK and its extremely poor service to sellers who have no protection whatsoever but at the same time get ripped off in transaction fees.

I am determined to get the SSL certificate, Merchant account and payment gateway up and running asap.

Could anyone advise on how long may this process take in that order? If I get the whole payment gateway package I wont be needing an SSL certificate or will I also need to get it?

Thanks a lot

Getting the merchant account set up may be the most lengthy part of the process. The first thing you should do however is choose your payment gateway as they should be able to handle your merchant account application.

With regards to SSL certificate this depends on the type of integration you are considering. We offer two types Direct and Hosted Form, with direct integration your customers are inputting card details directly on to your site so you need to be fully PCI compliant and require an SSL cert. If you choose hosted form then your customers are re-directed to a CharityClear hosted payment page and no SSL cert may be required.

Marc.

 

[RSS_UK]

Getting the merchant account set up may be the most lengthy part of the process. The first thing you should do however is choose your payment gateway as they should be able to handle your merchant account application.

With regards to SSL certificate this depends on the type of integration you are considering. We offer two types Direct and Hosted Form, with direct integration your customers are inputting card details directly on to your site so you need to be fully PCI compliant and require an SSL cert. If you choose hosted form then your customers are re-directed to a CharityClear hosted payment page and no SSL cert may be required.

Marc.

Thanks Marc,

Well, so far, yours is the most attractive option, so could you provide me with an website that already uses your payment gateway so I can check it out?

Would the CharityClear hosted payment page be customisable with my company logo or how does that work? That´s one of the reasons why I would like to check a website that already uses it.

I would like it to integrate with the rest of our website design and feel.

Fran.