Taking payments online

Participants can pay their Award fee online, on Stripe’s own page. The money goes to your own Stripe account. It goes straight to you. We never see a card.

Connect your Stripe account

Open Settings, then the Payment gateway setting, which takes you to Payments. Under Stripe account choose Connect a Stripe account. Stripe’s own page asks for what it needs to know about the organisation. When you finish, Stripe brings you back and the page says This account can take payments.

If you leave before you finish, come back and choose Continue setting up. It carries on with the same account. Check again asks Stripe how the account stands now.

Choose Stripe

Under How participants pay choose Stripe, then Save the choice. You can choose Stripe only when your account can take payments. The choice is saved in the draft, so publish the draft like any other setting. Until you do, participants are not offered online payment, and staff keep recording payments by hand as before.

Award Centres that collect their own fees

Where your fees say the Award Centre collects them, a Centre admin opens Payments too and connects the Centre’s own account. A Centre whose fees the Operator collects has nothing to connect.

What happens when a participant pays

A participant with a fee that is not paid sees Pay now on their home page. They pay on Stripe’s page, in their language. When Stripe confirms the payment it shows as Paid within moments, with Stripe’s reference in its history, and a participant who waited only for the payment is checked again.

Refund a payment

Open the payment under Payments. Under Refund through Stripe write a Note and choose Refund through Stripe. The payment shows Refund requested until Stripe confirms it, then Refunded. A payment recorded by hand is changed by hand, as before.

PayPal instead of Stripe

Under PayPal account enter the Client id and the Secret of your own PayPal REST app, then choose Check and connect PayPal. PayPal checks them and we register our webhook with it. The secret is kept encrypted and never shown again. Once PayPal is connected and your fees are in a currency PayPal takes, you can choose PayPal under How participants pay. PayPal does not take Jordanian dinars, for example. Participants pay on PayPal’s page, and refunds work as they do for Stripe.

Payment links and receipts

When a fee is owed and you take payments online, the payer is mailed a link to pay without an account, in their language. A guardian can pay for a participant that way. When a payment is paid, by any gateway or by hand, the payer is mailed a numbered receipt as a PDF, such as CZ-2026-000042, which can be downloaded again from the payment.