PatronManager Help

All About Leap Merchant Services

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All About Leap Merchant Services: https://help.pm.leapevent.tech/a/1711360

Leap Merchant Services is our next-generation payments solution with best-in-class technology, powered by Stripe. It's easy to use and saves you time so you can stay focused on delivering results for your organization.

Want to know more about Leap Merchant Services? Read on for our FAQs about PatronManager's payment processor.

I want to learn more about Leap Merchant Services!

Best-in-Class: Leap Merchant Services, powered by Stripe, offers payment processing technology that delivers safe, secure, and reliable transactions, along with continued innovation to ensure your payment solution stays ahead of the curve in today’s rapidly changing environment and meets the needs of your organization. Key benefits include:

  • Improved efficiency with more automation (e.g. PCI compliance) and time savings
  • Increased revenue with more convenience for your patrons and donors
  • Better data management to improve ongoing tracking/reporting

Ease-of-Use and Reliability: Saving time with a simple and reliable settlement process is a top priority. With our investment in Salesforce and Stripe technology partnerships combined with PatronManager’s deep experience with Arts & Culture organizations, Leap Merchant Services allows for continually evolving solutions to meet your needs.

We’ve Got Your Back: We’re committed to delivering a highly valued payments solution and with our merchant services solution, our team of experts have your back. From initial onboarding and setup to ongoing compliance management and chasing down chargebacks, our team is here to make payment processing easy, so you can focus on selling more tickets, raising more funds, and creating a delightful experience for your patrons and donors.

After switching to Leap Merchant Services, it's possible that you may still receive chargebacks for older transactions processed on your previous payment processing solution (i.e. Bluefin). You will still need to respond to those chargebacks with these steps.

Is Leap Merchant Services PCI compliant?

Yes! Through our best-in-class payments technology partnership with Stripe, Leap Merchant Services provides a leading PCI-compliant solution.

While there are no annual compliance tasks, you still need to follow PCI Data Security Standards with regard to handling cardholder data. For example, never write credit card numbers down on paper; instead, enter the card details directly into the secure payment form in PatronManager when you process phone transactions.

Are onsite credit card transactions secure?

Yes. The payment terminals you'll use encrypt sensitive card information through secure end-to-end encryption (E2EE) the moment it is presented to the card reader.

Further, if you enter card details manually (e.g. for phone transactions), you'll do so by typing the card details into a secure iframe that pops up in PatronManager. The iframe securely sends the payment information over an HTTPS connection to our processor. No card details are entered or stored directly into PatronManager. When the success response comes back from the processor, only the card type, expiration date, and last 4 digits will be stored and shown on the Payment Transaction record.

What protection does Leap Merchant Services offer against fraud?

Leap Merchant Services (LMS) is built on Stripe, so it uses Stripe's advanced fraud protection to help protect you from fraudulent transactions.

Stripe's fraud protection uses machine learning to decide which authentication methods should be applied for a transaction, and these heuristics can change over time based on trends and new data. 

If Stripe believes that a transaction may be fraudulent, it can trigger 3DS authentication. In these cases, the cardholder may need to log into their bank account and approve the transaction or copy and paste a code sent to them via SMS.

What payment methods are accepted?

With Leap Merchant Services you can accept Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express.

You can also accept payments with these cards via a digital wallet in person (the terminals accept contactless payments where a patron taps their phone or watch), and online (Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Link are supported for both the Public Ticketing Site and Donation Forms).

What access do I have?

All your data in one place. With Leap Merchant Services, everything is consolidated within PatronManager.

How do I report on Leap Merchant Services?

All reporting happens in PatronManager.

To learn more about financial reporting with Leap Merchant Services, check out this article!

Note: if you have a per-ticket fee contract with us and currently receive settlement reports from PatronManager for those per-ticket fees, that will not change.

What's the payout timing?

With Leap Merchant Services, payout speeds will be T+2 (business days) for US and Australian clients. Canadian clients will have their payout speed based on calendar days. Further, payouts continue on a rolling basis, with no holdbacks and no minimums.

For a chart of payout speeds, check out our resource here.

When are credit card processing fees deducted?

Credit card processing fees are subtracted from your transaction total before your payout. This means your payout from Leap Merchant Services reflects your gross total minus credit card processing fees, and will equal the Net Total in the Credit Card Reconciliation Report.

Will credit card processing fees be refunded if the transaction is refunded?

No. Credit card processing fees will not be refunded if a transaction is refunded.

Can I use a deposit-only bank account with Leap Merchant Services?

No. Your bank account must support both credit and debit transactions to onboard with Leap Merchant Services.

Can you tell me more about these terminals?

You bet! We've got a whole article about the terminals, which includes a set of terminal-specific FAQs.

What about recurring donations?

When you first switch over to Leap Merchant Services, you'll need to contact your recurring donors to add their card details for Leap Merchant Services.

You'll have a built-in report to keep track of which donors need a phone call, and many clients have found that it's a great opportunity to connect with those donors and thank them for their ongoing support.

Updating the card details for an existing recurring donation is quick and easy - no need to cancel it and start over.

Once you're on Leap Merchant Services, recurring donations will continue to process on their set schedule.

And best of all? Thanks to our brand new feature that automatically updates card details when a credit card expires, you won't need to worry about those ongoing future updates anymore!

Will I be able to refund prior transactions created via my former processor?

Yes, until you close your old account. You will be able to refund transactions that were processed through your former payment processor, even after you switch to Leap Merchant Services.

Once you close your account with your former processor, you won't be able to refund those credit card transactions anymore. Instead, you could refund to cash, check, donation, or gift card.

What's different for Canada vs the US?

There are a couple nuances for clients in Canada - if this is you, click below to expand the details.

More about Leap Merchant Services in Canada

Good news: Leap Merchant Services is available in Canada! Here are a few things you should know.

Weekends are treated just like weekdays for your payout schedule

  • In other words, your payout speed and schedule should remain consistent with what you have today.

There are some nuances around Interac debit cards

  • Interac debit cards can be used for online transactions (your Public Ticketing Site and Donation Forms) as long as they have a major card brand logo (e.g. Visa, MasterCard).
  • Interac debit cards that work only via the Interac network cannot be used online.
  • Interac debit cards of all kinds can be used for in-person payments (Ticket Orders and single Donations) on the terminals, however those in-person debit transactions cannot be refunded back to the card. You could refund to cash or check instead.
  • Interac debit cards cannot be used for recurring donations or mail/phone transactions.

Saving a card for future use is limited

  • Saving a card on file is not possible in PatronManager Box Office nor when processing a single donation
  • You can save a card on file by creating a recurring donation, or by creating a new Payment Method from the patron's Contact record
  • Patrons using Portal on your Public Ticketing Site can save a card for future use, and patrons can of course create a recurring donation via an online Donation Form (which in turns saves that card for future use)

Fees are displayed in CAD

  • Transaction Fees are charged based on the currency that your organization uses, so Transaction Fees will be reflected in CAD
  • Any lost chargeback fees will also be reflected in CAD

If you'd like to see adjustments to anything above in future, suggest Product Ideas to let us know!

Will we be able to change our bank account?

Absolutely; and you'll be able to do it yourself! Your designated user who set up Leap Merchant Services will be able to update your account info or bank account from the widget in the Client Community.

Don't know who your designated user is? Submit a case in the Client Community and our team can help!

LMS Client Community widget

From here, you'll be able to use the pencil icons to update the information you need.

Updating information

Please also submit a case asking for a new ACH authorization form so that we can update the bank account on file with PatronManager.

How long after a payment is made can I refund it?

Stripe has no technical time limits for issuing refunds! That said, it's recommended to try to refund transactions within 90 days of the original payment to avoid issues.

Refunds issued 6 months or more after the original payment have an increased likelihood of running into an issue.

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