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How to choose a payment provider for ticketing
Choosing a payment provider for ticketing (Mollie, Stripe or Bancontact Pro) depends on your visitors and your country. How to choose and open your account in time.
· 5 min read
The venue is booked, the poster is ready and ticket sales open in three weeks. Then it turns out one question is still open: how does your visitors' money actually reach you? If you sell tickets online, you need a payment provider, the company that processes your visitor's payment and pays it out to your bank account. Choosing a payment provider for ticketing sounds technical, but it comes down to three questions: where your visitors come from, where your organisation is based, and how much time you have left.
Why you connect your own payment provider
With Passavo you connect your own account with a provider, under Settings → Payments. Your visitors' money goes straight to your account; we don't sit in between and we don't take anything off it. Your provider charges a fee per successful payment, and that is between you and them.
There are three providers you can connect:
| Mollie | Stripe | Bancontact Pro | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Good fit for | Associations and small businesses in the Benelux | Anyone selling to tourists or based outside the Mollie countries | Anyone who only wants to offer the Bancontact Pay app online |
| Methods | Whatever you switch on in your Mollie dashboard: Bancontact, iDEAL, card, PayPal and more | Card, Bancontact and iDEAL, with Apple Pay and Google Pay through the card | Only the Bancontact Pay app |
| Connecting | You paste your API key | One button, you log in to Stripe | You paste the key they give you |
Question 1: how do your visitors pay?
This is the question that carries the most weight. A Belgian looks for Bancontact, a Dutch visitor for iDEAL, and a tourist from Lyon or Chicago reaches for their card. Visitors who don't see the method they trust are more likely to drop out at the last step.
- Mostly Belgian visitors, perhaps some from the Netherlands: Mollie. You switch on Bancontact, iDEAL and card in one account.
- Many visitors from abroad: Stripe. With card, Apple Pay and Google Pay, almost everyone gets through checkout.
- A small circle who all use the Bancontact Pay app: Bancontact Pro. You can read how that works in Payconiq for associations.
Don't choose on the last cent. The differences in transaction fees are small compared with the difference in which methods your visitors know. You'll find the rates themselves on each provider's website; they change independently of us.
Question 2: where is your organisation based?
This is separate from your visitors. An organisation in Belgium can open an account with all three. An organisation in the Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy, Spain or Portugal can choose between Mollie and Stripe. If your organisation is in Bulgaria or outside Europe, go with Stripe.
One thing matters here: you need a company number. A non-profit (VZW/ASBL), a sole trader or a company can open an account; an unincorporated association without a company number cannot. The ways around that are in What is a payment provider?
Question 3: how much time do you have left?
Every provider has to check who you are before it can collect money for you. You send in proof of identity and confirm your bank account. Allow one to five working days, sometimes faster, sometimes slower if a document is missing.
To keep it moving:
- Use your organisation's name exactly as it appears in the company register, not as it appears on your poster.
- Make sure the bank account is in the organisation's name.
- Send a sharp photo of your ID card, with all four corners in the frame.
- Reply quickly to the provider's emails.
The steps for each provider are in Create a Mollie account and Create a Stripe account.
An example: the drama club with three hundred seats
An amateur drama club plays three nights at the local arts centre, with a hundred seats a night and a ticket at 14 euros. Most of the audience are family and neighbours, but the director has friends in Breda, in the Netherlands, who are coming to watch as well.
- The club is a non-profit (VZW/ASBL) with a company number, so it can open an account.
- It chooses Mollie and switches on Bancontact, iDEAL and card.
- Three weeks before ticket sales open, the treasurer applies for the account. After two working days it is approved.
- After connecting it, she makes a test payment with her own Bancontact card and sees exactly what a visitor will see.
A visitor from the village pays with Bancontact, the friends from Breda with iDEAL. Under Payment methods on the dashboard, she can see how much came in through each method.
Can you switch later?
Yes. You can connect several providers and use Use this provider to set which one your ticket shop uses. Your ticket shop always uses one at a time, and your visitor only sees that provider's methods.
Existing orders and tickets stay as they are when you switch. A refund goes through the provider that order was paid with, so keep that old connection in place as long as there are tickets for upcoming events on it. If a method is missing from your shop, switch it on with the provider you already have rather than connecting a second one.
What it costs altogether
There are two parties. Your payment provider charges a fee per successful payment, deducted from your payout. With Passavo you pay no amount per ticket and no percentage: on the free plan you sell up to 100 paid tickets per event, and the paid plans start at €9.00 per month. It's all on the pricing page.
Still weighing up the three? Then Which payment provider should you choose? sets them side by side in detail, with the methods per country.
