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Handling Payments During Registration

Overview

When your program includes paid Products, participants see an extra step before they can finish registering: a checkout cart and a payment screen. This article explains what participants see, what happens if they do not finish paying, and what organizers should keep an eye on while registration is open.

For setup — creating Products, choosing fees, and setting timers — see Configuring Payments and Payment Timers and Fees.

How It Works

What a participant sees, step by step

When a program has Products attached, the registration flow has these steps:

  1. Attendance — choose which activities to attend
  2. Questions — answer required questions
  3. Checkout — review the items they are paying for, adjust quantities, and remove optional items they do not want
  4. Pay Now — enter card details on Stripe's payment screen

The Checkout step looks like a typical online shopping cart. Required Products are pre-selected and cannot be removed. Optional Products can be added or removed up to each Product's per-person limit.

The final action button on the registration form changes from Complete to Checkout so participants understand a payment is involved.

How payment is taken

When the participant clicks Pay Now:

  • A Stripe payment screen opens to collect the card
  • Participants who have used Stripe before (with services like Uber or Airbnb) can enter their phone number to retrieve a saved card via Stripe Link
  • Once the charge goes through, the participant returns to Eventene with a confirmation, and the order shows up in the program's Orders tab

How fees show up at checkout

What the participant sees depends on the fee setting in Payment Settings:

  • If the organizer absorbs the fees, the participant sees only the Product price. Fees come out of the organizer's share.
  • If the fees are passed to invitees, a separate Service Fee line appears in the cart and totals.

If a participant uses a credit to bring their total to $0, no fee is charged at all.

How a payment timer affects the experience

If a payment timer is on (set up in Payment Settings), a countdown appears once the participant reaches a step that triggers it.

  • If the participant clicks Pay Now before the countdown ends, payment goes through normally
  • If the countdown expires first, the registration is not saved, the participant's selections are cleared, and they have to start the registration over

The timer is meant to stop participants from holding seats while they shop around. It is not meant to penalize slow participants — choose a length that matches how long an honest registration should take.

What happens if payment is not completed

A payment can fall through for several reasons: the participant closes the browser, the card is declined, the timer expires, or they simply walk away. In all of these cases:

  • No order is recorded
  • The registration stays In Progress or Incomplete
  • Any required-Product activities the participant had selected are not finalized

The participant can come back later through their personalized link and try again. A reminder email is usually the fastest way to bring them back — see Monitor and Communicate.

What organizers should watch

While registration is open, especially in the first hours:

  • Check the Orders tab to see successful transactions as they come in
  • Use Total Collected on the Orders view to compare what has been paid against what is expected
  • Filter participants by registration status to find people stuck on Checkout

For walk-in or on-site registrations during the event, the same flow applies — the participant just needs a working device and a card.

Tips & Best Practices

  • Test the participant checkout end-to-end before publishing — including a real card transaction if you can
  • Be clear in your communications that payment is required to complete registration
  • Keep timer lengths realistic; too short creates frustration, too long defeats the purpose
  • For on-site registrations, have a backup plan (printed instructions, a tablet) for participants without a phone or card
  • Watch the Orders tab the morning registration opens — that is when most failures (declined cards, address mismatches) tend to surface