Bid Beacon - The Complete Payment Guide
You can accept payments through our app when the auction is complete!
Don’t miss out again on participation because someone forgot to take out cash or bring their cheque book. By accepting payments through the Bid Beacon app, people can choose the convenience of digit payment, which will also help to reduce the payment scramble a the end of the auction.
In this guide we will cover the different payment options and how to set them up seamlessly in the app in order to make your auction a complete success.
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Full Flexibility
Enabling online payment gives guests the option to pay for their items through the app by digital means, but they can still pay in person with cash, cheque, or credit card payment.
Our payments integrations use the best practices of the various payment providers. No credit card information is passed through, or stored on our servers. handled by fully PCI compliant Stripe, which handles payments for giants like Kickstarter, Shopify and OpenTable.
Some auction sites take a percentage of your auction sales, whereas we only charge a flat fee to enable the payment option. Stripe, like any payment provider, does charge processing fees.
Choose Your Payment Providers:
Accept Credit Card payment through fully PCI compliant Stripe, which handles payments for giants like Kickstarter, Shopify and OpenTable.
Not all users have credit cards, and PayPalis a popular alternative for handling online payments beyond just with credit cards.
Already popular because of easy to use card readers, Square, not you can use your account to accept payment from within Bid Beacon!
How to Configure Payments in Bid Beacon:
Bid Beacon lets you accept payments from your guests through a few different payment providers. Each has their own setup procedure on their end, but how they are configured within Bid Beacon is the same for each. You can configure as many as you like. If more than one is configured, users will be prompted to choose which one they want to use.
Each provider has both Live/Production keys, and Test/Sandbox keys. The final auction payment will always only use the keys you have entered into the Live/Production fields in Bid Beacon.
Payment providers can be configured on your account profile, so you can easily use the same payment configuration on future auctions. A payment provider must be configured on the auction under Manage Online Payment in order to accept payment from guests when the auction ends.
- Click ‘Edit Profile’ and scroll down to select ‘Configure Payment Providers’ to configure payment providers on your user account.
- If in an auction with Online Payments enabled, you will have a side menu ‘Manage Online Payment’ to configure payment for this specific auction.
- If you fill in payment configuration on profile first, then opening auction payment config will prompt you if you want to copy profile values over.
- Tap on the key you wish to enter, and then paste in the key. Make sure you are putting the correct keys in the right fields.
- Once you have payment providers configured, you can test using the Test Online Payment button at the top. If you have multiple payment providers, you will have to choose which provider you wish to test.
- Each payment provider has their own section that can be collapsed. Each has live and test keys. On auction over, only providers with Live keys configured will be presented as options to your guests.
How to Set Up Stripe:
- Create a Stripe account
- Click ‘Developers’ -> ‘API Keys’
- Toggle to switch between live and test keys
- Copy publishable and secret keys into your Bid Beacon profile
- See Configuring Payment In Bid Beacon above to see where to enter key
How to Setup PayPal:
- Create a PayPal account in order to accept payments, you must upgrade to a business account which takes a few days.
- Login to the developer dashboard at https://developer.paypal.com
- Click ‘My Apps & Credentials’
- Create an App and name it something relevant to your auction
- Paypal has Sandbox keys for testing, and Live keys for accepting actual payments
- Find your Client ID and Secret (you need to click ‘Show’ to reveal your secret)
- See Configuring Payment In Bid Beacon above for more details
How to Setup Square:
- Create a Square account
- Login to the Square dashboard at https://squareup.com/dashboard/
- In side menu, click ‘Apps’, then ‘My Apps’
- Then click ‘My Apps’
- Then click ‘Go to Developer Console’ button
- Then click ‘Create Your First Application’ or ‘New Application’ button
- Give your application some name, maybe the same name as your auction, and click ‘Create’
- One your application is created, click it to view details
- Click ‘Show’ to see your Personal Access Token, which you’ll need to copy and enter into Bid Beacon
- Click ‘Locations’ to see a list of Locations on your account (you add Locations from non-developer dashboard: https://squareup.com/dashboard/locations)
- Copy the Location ID to enter into Square provider configuration in Bid Beacon
- Note that we cannot differentiate between Live and Sandbox keys, so you need to ensure you put the right values in the right fields!
- See Configuring Payment In Bid Beacon above for more details
Auction End Guest Experience:
- When auction ends, guests can view their winnings
- Their winnings are conveniently subtotals
- Guests can see if their items are marked as paid/picked up
- They can find an auction admin to make payment in person, and they mark item as paid
- Or they can click ‘Pay $ Now’ to pay by credit card through the app, and item is automatically marked as paid
Auction End Admin Experience:
- When auction ends, admins can Manage Pickup
- Winnings are conveniently subtotaled by guest
- Items can be marked as paid and picked up individually or for all items a user paid for
- Paid/Picked up items are moved to a ‘Complete’ tab to streamline closure
