GoCardless (Pay by Bank)

Pay by Bank (GoCardless) lets your buyers pay straight from their bank account – no card needed. Like Stripe, the money comes directly to your account, so each organiser connects their own GoCardless account before the option appears at checkout.

Don’t be put off by the word “account” – signing up to GoCardless is really easy. It’s a very simple sign-up process that works for sole traders with no business proof required, and it only takes a few minutes.

It’s also cheap: as a new GoCardless user you get 90 days completely FREE – no fees at all. After that the fees are 1% + 20p per order, capped at £4, which is much cheaper than Stripe – on a £50 ticket you’d pay about 70p instead of £1.50+.

[Screenshot: the Pay by Bank (GoCardless) option in the Event Settings gateways list]

Pay by Bank is currently in testing and is password protected – if you’d like to try it out, get in touch and I’ll enable it for you.

The setup needs two things from your GoCardless account:

• an Access Token – lets Snappy take payments into your GoCardless account
• a Webhook Secret – lets GoCardless tell Snappy when a payment completes, so orders update automatically

Step 1 – Create a GoCardless account #

If you don’t already have one, sign up for a GoCardless account and complete their verification (bank details and identity checks). You need a fully verified live account to create live access tokens.

Tip: sign up using this referral link. At the time of writing it gives new account holders a £100 bonus once they’ve passed £2,000 through the account in the first 90 days – it’s a win-win as it helps support Snappy Tickets too. (You’ll also find this link in the Pay by Bank section of your Event Settings page.)

Step 2 – Create your Access Token #

1. Log in to your GoCardless dashboard and go to Developers > Access tokens.
2. Click Create access token, give it a name (eg Snappy Tickets) and set the access level to Read/Write. Make sure you’re creating a live token, not a sandbox one.
3. Copy the token straight away – like other API keys it’s only shown once.
4. Back in Snappy, go to your Event Settings page and paste it into the Access Token field in the Pay by Bank section, then click Update Settings to save it.

[Screenshot: the Access Token and Webhook Secret fields in Event Settings]

Step 3 – Verify the connection #

Once the token is saved, click Verify connection. This checks the token with GoCardless and confirms which account your payments will be collected into.

[Screenshot: the Verify connection button]

When it succeeds the badge changes to Incomplete – the token is verified, but the badge won’t turn fully green until you’ve also set up the webhook secret in the next step. If verification fails, check the token is a live token (not sandbox) and that you copied the whole thing.

Important: if you ever change the Access Token its verified status is cleared, so always click Verify connection again after editing it.

Step 4 – Set up the Webhook Secret #

The webhook lets GoCardless notify Snappy when a payment completes, which is what keeps your order statuses up to date. The webhook is protected by a secret which proves the notifications really come from GoCardless – you don’t have to make one up yourself, as GoCardless can generate one for you.

1. Copy the webhook URL shown on the Event Settings page (click the box to select it).
2. In your GoCardless dashboard go to Developers > Webhook endpoints and create a new endpoint. Paste in the webhook URL you just copied.
3. For the secret, click the button to have GoCardless generate one for you, then copy the secret it creates.
4. Back in Event Settings, paste that secret into the Webhook Secret field and click Update Settings.

[Screenshot: the webhook URL box in Event Settings and the Webhook endpoints page in the GoCardless dashboard]

Once both the verified token and the webhook secret are in place, the badge turns green: Connected – collecting into Your Name.

[Screenshot: the green Connected badge]

Without the webhook, payments will still arrive in your GoCardless account but orders on Snappy won’t update when they complete.

When is the gateway enabled? #

The Pay by Bank option won’t appear at checkout until your settings are verified. The status badge in Event Settings tells you where you are:

• Not connected – no verified access token, so the gateway is disabled
• Incomplete – token verified, but the webhook secret hasn’t been entered and registered yet
• Connected – everything is verified and Pay by Bank is offered to your buyers at checkout

Payments #

When a buyer pays by bank the order waits for the payment to confirm before completing – bank payments aren’t instant like cards. You don’t need to do anything: the webhook updates the order automatically.

If you need to refund a payment, see the Refunds section below – then set the order status to cancelled in your Snappy Event Orders page.

Refunds #

Refunds are disabled by default on a new GoCardless account, so switch them on before you need one:

1. In your GoCardless dashboard go to Settings > Company Settings.
2. Turn off the 7-day safety refund option and save – leaving it on blocks refunds for the first 7 days after each payment.

Once enabled you can refund from the payments page in your GoCardless dashboard (open the payment and choose Refund), or from the order page on this site – the order option is best because it keeps the order’s refund record and totals in sync. Either way the money goes straight back to the bank account the buyer paid from.

One thing to know: you can only refund up to your available refund amount (shown under Settings > Account settings in GoCardless) – that’s the money GoCardless is still holding for you before it pays out to your bank.