Silent Auction Pro™ partners with Element Payment Services, the industry leader in PCI DSS compliant payment processing, to offer fully-integrated, secure state-of-the-art encrypted and cost-effective payment processing. This integrated credit card solution is available with the optional AuctionDay™ component.
After establishing and configuring your merchant account, you will be able to:
To rent credit card readers/swipers
Silent Auction Pro offers credit card reader rentals. These readers are USB plug-and-play units that require no additional software and are specific to groups using Element's integrated solution. Rental fees are $25/reader + shipping and should be reserved at least a month ahead of your event. To determine how many stations (readers, computers, printers) you will need to streamline check-out, see the table below. At minimum, two are recommended to have one as a back-up.
You must be a Group Administrator level member to request credit card readers. Reserve your credit card readers by completing the Credit Card Reader Request Form. Mouse over the menu item and click . The form contains the following fields:
After verifying your information, click to view the card reader contract. Review the contract, scroll to the bottom, check the "I agree..." checkbox then click the button. This will email your card reader request to our Customer Service department and they will respond with a confirmation email and credit card receipt within 24 hrs. A confirmation of the request will also be sent to the email address you provided.
| Recommended Number of Stations | |
|---|---|
| Attendees | Readers |
| 1–50 | 1–2 |
| 50–100 | 2–3 |
| 100–150 | 3 |
| 150–250 | 4 |
| 300–400 | 5 |
| 400–500 | 6 |
A few notes about credit card processing, associated fees, and supported credit cards
While you can process credit cards through Silent Auction Pro using a different payment vendor certain functionality is disabled, such as support for online ticket sales, online bidding, and express check-out (placing cards on file). See the FAQ topic, Can I use my own credit card processing company rather than Element?. Also, our swiper rentals are encrypted to work through Element Payment Services. Groups using a different credit card processor must provide their own swipers.
Any type of credit card can be processed through Silent Auction Pro depending upon the arrangements a group makes with Element Payment Services, however, rates vary. For example, American Express (AmEx) typically charges a setup fee, monthly fee, and averages about 6%. Visa and Mastercard (MC) typically average around 3% and there is no setup or monthly fee. These rates are not set by Silent Auction Pro. To determine your exact rate for integrated credit card processing, contact Element Payment Services directly.
Your group can process American Express transactions providing the group administrator has arranged with Element Payment Services to do so. To accept American Express for online ticket sales, we suggest adding a custom message to the Online Ticket Purchase page informing your attendees that you also accept American Express and that the selection in the credit card box (VISA/MC) does not matter as long as one is selected. The system will ignore that setting and accept and process an AmEx card as long as it has been set up with Element.Refer to the Event Fields table in the Events help topic for more on custom messages.
Signatures are not required for credit card purchases and addresses do not need to be on file.