Accepting credit card payments can be confusing, but we make it simple. To accept credit card payments for your event, you will need a payment processor to charge the cards and send you the money. The good news is that we provide you with a payment processor as part of RedPodium called Webconnex Payments, enabling you to charge your customers' credit cards. As you publish your registration page for the first time, we'll guide you through a simple setup, and you'll be able to accept credit cards in just a few minutes.

One of the best things about RedPodium is that you are the direct seller of registrations, and the money from your event will go straight to you. This is unlike many other registration companies that act as the middleman between you and your registrants. In that situation, registrants actually pay the registration company (not you), they see the registration company's name on their credit card statement (not yours), and then the registration company holds your event payouts until AFTER your event has concluded (which stinks).

So, in order to have funds go straight to you, RedPodium requires you to have a payment processor (which we set up for you). A payment processor (sometimes also referred to as a merchant processor) is a company that works directly with credit card companies such as Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover to charge someone's credit card and then transfer the money to your bank account.

At RedPodium, we offer a payment processing solution called Webconnex Payments, which is similar to other payment processors you may be familiar with, such as Stripe, Square or PayPal. To get started with Webconnex Payments, all you need to do is publish your registration page, and the system will guide you through a brief setup to start accepting credit card payments.

Because you are the direct seller of registrations on RedPodium, credit card companies require all payment processors to have sellers complete a process known as KYC or "Know Your Customer" — which is industry jargon referring to a process that vets you as a real person or organization and ensures you are not engaged in any suspicious activities.

This process usually takes only a few minutes and involves three steps. The first step requires you to provide information about your organization, such as EIN number, address, year formed, and a few other basic questions.

The second part of the process verifies that you are a real person and requires basic information about you, such as name, address, birth date, phone number, and possibly your social security number. This is done to ensure you are a legitimate individual.

The final part requires you to provide direct deposit information so funds can be transferred to you. You will be asked to provide the bank name, routing number, account number, and account type. At this stage, you can also determine how often you want payouts for your event, which can be daily, weekly or monthly.

The good news is you can go live with your registration page and start accepting credit card payments with Webconnex Payments almost instantaneously without needing to verify your organization or identity upfront. However, you won't be able to receive your funds until you do. It is recommended that you verify yourself immediately, but you can have up to two weeks of accepting credit card payments before you need to verify yourself.

Be warned that the KYC process should be smooth sailing and a one-time process, but occasionally, payment processors may require additional documentation about you. This can be rare, but it means you need to provide some other form of documentation about yourself or your organization about your history because one or more pieces of information about you did not provide sufficient detail.

An increasingly less common way to process credit card payments is with something called a Merchant Account or Payment Gateway. A merchant account is typically a term for a kind of bank account that is purely used for credit/debit card processing and is usually more closely related to a bank such as Wells Fargo or Bank of America. Merchant accounts require another piece of software to process a credit card payment, and that is called a Payment Gateway. The most popular payment gateway in the world is called Authorize.net, but there are others such as NMI, Paya, Cybersource, First Data, and others. These payment gateways are connected to your merchant account, and credit card funds go into those accounts. If you already have a merchant account and a payment gateway, you might be able to use it to process payments with RedPodium, as long as the gateway is supported by our list of Payment Processors.