If you set up online payments through Populi, your school can accept payments for tuition, fees, books, applications, and donations via credit card and electronic check/ACH. Populi works with a few different payment processors:
- Stripe is a complete payment solution, serving as both merchant account (identifies you and where to deposit the funds) and payment gateway (securely transmits transactions). It takes around five minutes to set up a new Stripe account and connect it with Populi. Its pricing is better than just about anything out there—and it has no setup, monthly, or card storage fees. All things considered, we think Stripe is the best option for Populi customers.
- Authorize.net provides an assortment of payment services.
- Their gateway/merchant account solution is comparable to Stripe (both features and price), but includes some extra fees.
- Their payment gateway works with almost every merchant account out there. If you wish to keep your existing merchant account (or open a new one) Authorize.net's payment gateway will (probably) let you do that.
- Non-profit institutions can get discounted pricing for Authorize.net by signing up for it through Moolah.
- Paypal is the ubiquitous payments platform found nearly everywhere online. Strictly speaking, it provides you with a merchant account that is connected to an external payment processor. A Paypal Business account allows payers to use a wide variety of payment methods and currencies that flow into your school's bank account in the currency of your choosing. Its fee structure is somewhat labyrinthine and is typically more expensive than Stripe or Authorize.net. However, it gives people more options for making payments and donations and would likely serve well alongside your school's main payment processor.
Setup
Start by going to Financial > Settings > Online Payments. After filling in those settings, you'll go to Settings > Payment Gateways to connect your Stripe, Authorize.net, or other payment processor account with Populi.
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