As Event Payments Heat up, SignUpGenius Works With WePay For Ticketing Payments

SignUpGenius Inc., an event-organizing service, is now using WePay Inc. for its payment-processing services. The integration, announced Monday, means event organizers can collect payments for ticket sales, event registration, capital campaigns, and business services, SignUpGenius says.

Charlotte, N.C.-based SignUpGenius says as many as 12 million persons use its online tools each month for an event. Online payments are free for event organizers to collect, while participants are charged a 5% processing fee plus 50 cents per transaction.

“Millions of people already use our sign ups to plan fundraisers, schedule business appointments, collect donations and much more each month,” said Dan Rutledge, SignUpGenius chief executive in a press release. “This is a natural step for SignUpGenius so people can seamlessly plan an event from start to finish on the site.”

The company is taking advantage of WePay’s role as a payment facilitator, a type of payment processor that enables many sub-merchants to use the facilitator’s merchant account for their payment needs.

“WePay helps online platforms like those in the event- management space to seamlessly embed payments processing into their user experiences,” a WePay spokesperson says in an email. “This means they can then help event organizers to start selling tickets in minutes. What’s more, they can do so accepting a variety of consumer-preferred payment methods with no unexpected or hidden fees, enjoy quick settlements to their preferred bank accounts, and have easy visibility to all sales data within platform reporting.”

Event organizers are a favorite of payments companies, especially of late. In August, processor Global Payments Inc.  bought two divisions of Active Network LLC., the parent of Active.com that services 620,000 activities for 36,000 merchants. Last week, Square Inc. secured a payment-processing contract with Eventbrite Inc., which provides event organizing services, and invested $25 million in the company.

“Events are one of the hottest areas for payment facilitators, and have been for some time,” Todd Ablowitz, president of Double Diamond Group, a Centennial, Colo.-based payments advisory firm, says in an email.

“Events are a giant business, and let’s face it, payments there have been clunky at best. The payment-facilitator model is transforming that market, removing friction and increasing the effectiveness of those events,” Ablowitz says. Companies like RunSignUp “have captured tons of market share with the model, and they are second in their market behind Active.com.” RunSignUp LLC provides sports events services.