Learn the Basics
The PaymentSpring Gateway is a managed interface that helps our clients accept payments online or in person via debit, credit or other payment methods. That’s a big part of doing business, and we want to make sure it’s done right—simply and securely with all the savvy bells and whistles busy nonprofits and businesses need to be amazing.
We offer a mobile app, sophisticated payment gateway and virtual card reading terminals as well as point-of-sale terminals. PaymentSpring clients can also build a customized donor or payments page to submit billing data securely though our system, reducing your liability and protecting your donor/customer information. Because payments data is processed outside of our clients’ software system, a substantial amount of the PCI compliance requirements are our burden rather than yours.
And, we’ve seen the tangled mess that can be made using systems that are not awesomely integrated or user-friendly. “Run a quick sales tracking report.” Yeah, sure. “Give me about 30 minutes.” Not cool. Not necessary. The PaymentSpring Gateway takes client usability and reporting just as seriously as it does donor/customer usability and security. View all of your donor/customer info and transactions, set up subscriptions and recurring payments, send refunds and run intuitive reports easily in one place. One place!
Check out our developer docs to learn about the API that makes our world go round, and contact us any time to learn more.
see gateway in action
The functionality explored in this video highlights some of the ways Gateway streamlines payment processing for businesses, nonprofits and SaaS clients. Watch as Gateway:
- creates a customer.
- saves a payment method.
- creates a one-time payment.
- emails the receipt.
- creates an invoice.
- sets up a subscription, aka recurring payments.
- consolidates mobile transactions in your online dashboard.
This is just the beginning of what PaymentSpring’s all-in-one payment processing solution can do. There are several ways to customize Gateway to further enhance your business for developers and non-developers alike.
Manage Account Information
Before you get started managing your payments, use the Account tab to set your details and member access.
General: Set your account name and company information, including email address.
Receipt Templates: Determine how you want your receipts to look and function.
API Keys: If you are integrating payments to your own solution, use this tab to create your API keys.
Your Settings: Use this tab to change your password, update your email address and manage your privacy policy.
Team: Manage multiple gateway accounts easily, or give additional team members access to your gateway using the Team tab.
- Use Add Team Member button to add a team member. Enter email address and choose an access level.
Your team member will receive an invitation via email, which they will need to accept before the link expires (24 hours). Once they click “Let’s Roll” they are all set. - Anyone with access to multiple Gateway accounts can easily switch between accounts using the drop down on the left – without having to log in each time.
Create a Customer
Someone needs to have his/her info stored to make multiple payments? Excellent, here’s how:
- Log in to dashboard.paymentspring.com.
- Click “Customers” in the navigation menu on the left.
- Click “Create Customer” in the upper right corner.
- Complete the customer information and tap “Create Customer.”
- To add payment information, click the “Create Payment” button in the “Payments” tab of the customer detail record. Fill in the mandatory card number and expiration date, and we recommend you fill in all of the optional fields you can as well. (Going back to do it later is just extra work.)
- Tap “Save Method” at the bottom of the form to seal the deal.
create a payment
Here’s how to easily complete a one-off payment in the Gateway’s managed interface:
- Log in to dashboard.paymentspring.com
- Click “Payments” in the navigation menu on the left
- Check out the complied list of previously processed payments, and select “Create Payment” in the upper right corner
- Fill in the amount, card number and expiration date. Other details are optional
- Click “Create Payment” at the bottom of the form, and you’re done!
You’ll be automatically navigated to the payment detail page for the transaction you just processed.
Refund a Payment
Refunds happen—and when they do, it’s important to get it right the first time. This three-step process begins after a charge has been made. It can transact partial or full refunds.
- Click “Payments” in the navigation menu on the left.
- Find the payment you need to refund and click it.
- Navigate to the “Refund” tab.
- Type in the refund amount and click “Refund.”
Please note: the total amount of all refunds on a payment cannot exceed the amount of the initial charge.
checkout buttons & forms
Adding payments to your current website is so easy it can be done in minutes. Here’s how:
Step 1: Log into your Gateway account.
Select the “Widgets” option in the menu on the left.
Step 2: Choose your widget type.
For a button that links to a form, use the “Button” widget. For a form that displays right on your page, use the “Form” widget.
Step 3: Complete customization fields.
Build your form by tabbing through and completing each field. Your form builds as you go, so you can confirm and make adjustments along the way.
Complete the following info for your form:
- Widget Name: Name your form.
- Payment Amount: Choose a fixed amount that is paid by every customer, or allow the customer to enter the amount.
- Payment Methods: Select the payment types you’d like to offer: credit, ACH (bank account) or both.
- Payer Address: Determine if you want to collect this information or not.
- Recurring Payment: Determine if you would like to offer a recurring payment option to customers. If you choose to offer recurring payments, customize the name of your recurring payment field.
- Donation Costs (Nonprofits and Religious Organizations Only): If you are a nonprofit or a religious organization you have the option to allow customers to cover the cost of the transaction. If you select “yes,” decide if the amount should be a fixed amount, or a percentage of the transaction.
- Payment Allocation: If you want allow customers to choose how they want their payment to be applied, use the Payment Allocation section to list the options available. For example, a nonprofit collecting donations for several activities (e.g. summer camp and facility repairs) may list these options so donors can choose which effort to support.
- Custom Fields: If you have additional data to collect from each paying customer or donor, you can add as many custom fields as you need with the Custom Fields section. Add the field name and choose a field type. Choose from:
- Drop down: List options for customers to choose from.
- Text: Customers can type in their own info.
- Hidden: Use this custom option if you need specific data to be captured with transactions coming from your form. Customers won’t see this info, but it will be captured with your transaction information for you to access.
- Receipts: Elect to send receipts to merchants automatically or choose to send manually
- Button Text: Decide what you would like your submit button to say (e.g. “Submit,” “Order Now,” “Let’s Do This!”).
Step 4: Copy a single line of code and paste to your website.
It’s that easy! Once you’ve placed the code on your site through your content management tool, hit refresh on your website and watch the form appear.
If at any point you want to make adjustments to your form, simply:
- Choose Widgets in your Gateway Dashboard
- Choose the form or button you want to adjust from the Current Widgets menu.
- Click Update Settings button.
- Make the changes needed.
- Save the changes.
- That’s it. You don’t have to copy and re-paste the code—the changes will be made automatically
- Refresh your website to verify the changes.
Webhooks
PaymentSpring Gateway serves up real-time notifications the same way social media alerts you to posts or interactions of interest—instantly and at your command. Customizable webhook monitoring tells you when a significant activity takes place in Gateway as instructed via text, email or POST notification.
Watch webhooks work for you.
With PaymentSpring’s webhook monitoring, a notification can be created for just about anything, including:
- When an invoice is sent and/or paid.
- When a subscription (recurring payment) has been billed.
- When a batch settlement has been processed.
- When X number of online payments have failed in the last Y number of minutes.
- For Partner Tools users, when a notice is received by a merchant or nonprofit client, that same notification can be received by the partner.
PaymentSpring can also apply conditionals to webhook monitoring such as transactions over or under a certain amount or even occurrences specific to a certain customer or donor.
To learn even more about the types of notifications you can create and how webhook monitoring improves business intelligence, simply reach out to the team or watch a demo.
Create & Send an Invoice
- Start by ensuring your merchant information is complete via the “Accounts” section. This information is necessary to send invoices.
- Tap “Invoices” located in the left-hand navigation menu.
- Select “Create Invoice” in the upper right corner.
- Choose your “Issue Date” based on the date you plan to send the invoice (past, present or future).
- Choose your “Due Date.”
- Check “Custom Invoice Number” to enter a company invoice number, if necessary.
- Fill in Contact Information and Billing Address.
- Complete the “Description” line items. Use “Add Item” to add additional description fields.
- Choose the payment options you wish to make available to this customer (credit and/or ACH), and whether or not you will accept a partial payment.
- Add a custom “Note” if you wish to thank your customer/donor or provide them with extra information.
- Tap “Send Invoice” to complete your task.
Create a Subscription
Plans and subscriptions work together to set this up for a donor or customer. Before you can schedule a recurring payment, you must create a subscription:
- Log in to dashboard.paymentspring.com.
- Tap “Subscriptions” in the navigation menu on the left.
- Tap “Create Subscription” in the upper right corner.
- Fill in the subscription details. A plan name and a standard billing amount are a must.
You can override this for each subscribing customer. - Choose a billing frequency. Choose between monthly, weekly, quarterly, biannually and yearly, then choose the specific calendar date the payments should occur.
- Add any custom fields needed for managing recurring payments (examples: member number, student name, memorial fund name, etc.)
- Determine if you want a report emailed each time a payment is processed.
- Tap “Create Subscription” to finish off your efforts.
Now you are ready to schedule your recurring payment(s)!
- Tap on “Customers” on the left menu
- Locate the customer who authorized the recurring payment and tap
- Tap the subscriptions tab to enroll your customer in the subscription.
- Select the subscription type and tap Confirm Details
- Update the information as authorized by your customer
- Payment method (if multiples)
- Amount
- “ends after”
- Bill immediately or on the day you select next
- Frequency – monthly, weekly or quarterly (nice to know your customer has all of these options!)
- Now tap “Create Subscription” and that’s it!
- Update the information as authorized by your customer
Please note: if your customer calls to “cancel” their recurring payment, don’t forget to be a good steward to your customer and come back in to “unsubscribe” this recurring payment before the next one is scheduled to process. See the step below for details.
Handle Failed Subscription Payments
Well, shoot. A donor/customer payment failed. We’ll go ahead and note that for you in the plan’s email report. So far, it’s been working out well for us to let you decide how to handle a failed payment on a case-by-case basis. Feel free to give the charge a second try in our virtual terminal, charge the card number directly or wait until the next billing cycle to fire off another go at it.
Loud & clear: We will never take it upon ourselves to double charge your donor/customer on the next billing cycle or cancel his/her subscription due to a failed transaction.
Unsubscribe a Customer
If and when you need to remove a donor/customer subscription, visit the customer detail page to get started. Then:
- Tap “Customers” in the navigation menu on the left.
- Find the customer who needs unsubscribed.
- Select the “Subscriptions” tab and select the plan/subscription you wish to unsubscribe.
- Tap “Unsubscribe” to finish the job.
After unsubscribing, you’ll receive a confirmation note and there won’t be any new charges processed for that customer subscription.
Reporting
Access your data whenever you need it. Available reports include:
- Transaction Report: A list of your payments and refunds within the chosen date range.
- Batch Report: Total transaction amounts and details within the chosen dates.
- Subscription Report: Total transaction amounts and details about subscriptions that were billed on the selected date.
Additional reporting tip: Turn any search result in the Payments section into a report, using the Export link at the top of the search results.
Meet Your Mobile App
Getting Started with Mobile
Getting started with the PaymentSpring mobile payments app is easy:
- Download our free payment mobile app via the App Store and Google Play Store.
- Request your free mobile swipe device from our support team (additional swipe devices can be purchased for $20 each).
- Sign in to your payment dashboard.
- Connect your mobile swipe device to run credit cards through.
- Or, create a payment and key-enter the transaction amount to process it through the gateway.
- Send a receipt electronically via email or text after receiving payment confirmation.
- View all mobile payment activity via your online payment service dashboard.
- Refund mobile credit card payments as needed.
PCI DSS Overview
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a proprietary information security standard for organizations that handle branded credit card data. So, when you donate to a great cause or pay for a cool product/service using Visa, Mastercard, AMEX, etc., the nonprofit or business has a legal obligation to keep your financial information secure.
If you’re reading this, you’re likely the one with that legal obligation. Kudos to you for taking this responsibility seriously and for seeking a simple, secure payments solution.
The PCI DSS standard was created to increase controls around cardholder data to reduce credit card fraud via exposure. You’ll need to validate your compliance with this standard annually using an external Qualified Security Assessor (QSA), which creates a Report on Compliance (ROC) for organizations that transact in large volumes. (So many parentheses, so little time—we know.)
It can be a headache to comply with the PCI DSS as a nonprofit or business just trying to process transactions. Some of your business practices might need to change to comply, which can be expensive and additional overhead can accrue. Processing transactions on your own puts a lot of risk in your court. That’s one reason why folks partner with PaymentSpring, to take that risk off their shoulders.
Our payments solution lets sensitive cardholder data completely bypass your infrastructure and head our way. (Check out tokenization when ya get a sec.) This little detour significantly reduces PCI compliance headaches for business merchants and charitable organizations.
Five paragraphs cover this topic’s gist nicely, but if you’d like to learn more, check out our in-depth guide to PCI compliance.
Our Compliance Level
Looking for a partner in payments compliance? PaymentSpring is a certified, level 1 PCI service provider. That means we undergo the scrutinizing (for good reason) annual audit performed by a Qualified Security Assessor (QSA), and our Attestation of Compliance is available to our current clients at any time upon request.
We take this security responsibility seriously, ensuring PaymentSpring clients are protecting their donor’s and customer’s sensitive financial information at all points in the process. We have your back, so you can have theirs.
Tokenization
PCI compliance territory? Gross, we’d never make you go there. We’re darn happy the regulations exist though, and we utilize tokenization to stay compliant and keep your donor/customer info secure.
Check out this quick tokenization tutorial video to learn why it’s such an important security safeguard in the payment Gateway.
Here are the two things you’ll need to integrate tokenization into your software. When in doubt, call us or holler at your developer and he/she will go doc hunting.
Tokens can only be created through the API. Using your public API key, send a create token request with the cardholder data you wish to charge. In a web form, this would be done using JavaScript; you’ll need to use the GET/tokens/JSONP endpoint with JSONP to avoid cross-origin resource issues. The request will return a token ID, which your web form should then submit to your server.
$.ajax({
url: "https://api.paymentspring.com/api/v1/tokens/jsonp",
dataType: "jsonp",
data: {
public_api_key: "api_key",
card_number: 4111111111111111,
csc: 123,
card_exp_month: 8,
card_exp_year: 2018,
card_owner_name: "John Doe"
}
});
$ curl -u public-api-key: -XPOST https://api.paymentspring.com/api/v1/tokens \
-d card_number="4111111111111111" \
-d card_exp_month="1" \
-d card_exp_year="2020" \
-d csc="1234" \
-d card_owner_name="John Doe"
Using your private API key, have your server send a charge request using the ID of the token you just created. The token is able to be used just once and will be deactivated after the charge is made. You could also send a “create customer request” to save this card data as a customer to be charged later.
$ curl -u private-api-key: -XPOST https://api.paymentspring.com/api/v1/charge \ -d token="62a987ed39" \ -d amount="2000"
That’s all there is to it. Your servers never have card data pass through them. PCI compliance achieved!
5 Helpful Features of PaymentSpring’s Gateway System
5 Helpful Features of PaymentSpring’s Gateway System
November 19, 2019 | by Kyle Laughlin, | 3-min read
Processing payments is what fuels your business, but it can take a whole team to make sure it’s done right. That’s why PaymentSpring is here — to smoothly transport money from your customers to your organization, provide financial reporting for your accountant, and incorporate the latest technology to protect your clients’ financial data.
When you’re looking for a payment gateway, you need a dashboard that allows you to save customer data, charge credit cards and bank accounts, and issue refunds. Beyond the basics, the PaymentSpring dashboard also provides helpful features that enhance your business processes and shares powerful insights.
1. Real-time Payment Updates
Our webhooks platform lets you know in real time what is happening inside of PaymentSpring.
For example, if you’re a nonprofit, you may want to recognize donors who go above and beyond to support your cause. In the happy event of a gift above $1,000, you can set up a webhook to notify you via text message or email — so you can recognize the donor for their generosity right away.
2. Build Custom Payment Forms – No Coding Required
With our widgets, adding a payment form to your website is easier than ever. Copy and paste a line of basic code and your payment form will appear.
Plus, forms aren’t restricted to payments. By using custom fields, you can use collect t-shirt sizes, feedback, or anything else. To make changes, simply tweak and save your widget. Refresh your browser. See your changes. It’s as easy as that.
3. Find the Needle in the Data Stack
Receive a lot of payments? Like, a LOT of payments?
Our advanced search tools help you narrow down and find the payment information you’re looking for. Want to sort failed payments by credit card brand? Need to see all successful payments within a specific time frame? No problem.
Plus, if your accounting department needs a list, it’s just as easy to export and distribute data.
Spoiler: Skip to number five for another way to support your accounting department.
4. Context is Everything
Let PaymentSpring be the friend that gives developers a little help. Context helps supplement any API documentation. Our dashboard utilizes the same API endpoints an integrator would use.
Not sure how your JSON payload should look or curious what a response might look like? Create the action in the dashboard and it’ll will show you the request and response payloads used to make the call. Anywhere you see a logs tab in the dashboard, you can see the actions performed for that resource.
But of course, our docs are pretty legit too. You don’t have to take our word for it.
5. With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
… unless all you have is view-only access.
Does your accounting team want access to the PaymentSpring dashboard? Great! As view-only users, they’ll be able to see all of the data they need to do their job effectively – without having the ability to update, change, or charge.
These are just a handful of the rich features available via the PaymentSpring merchant dashboard.