Payment Gateways

Caution

Most organisations should run on one payment gateway. Add another gateway only when a separate legal entity must receive fees directly. Using multiple gateways requires customers to setup their payment methods for each gateway they are enrolled/billed for.

Routing precedence

When a charge is posted, Cadence resolves the payment gateway in this order:

1. Walk the category tree from the activity’s category up to the base category. If it finds a category which has a gateway set, it will use that gateway.
2. If the activity has a location, it will attempt to use the location’s default gateway.
3. Lastly, it will use your organisation’s global default gateway.

Example

Mapleridge Sports has two locations (Mapleridge East and Mapleridge West) and the following category tree:

graph TD
    Gym[Gymnastics] --> Rec[Recreational]
    Rec --> Kindy[Kindy]
    Kindy --> Kindy23[Kindy Age 2-3]
    Kindy --> Kindy45[Kindy Age 4-5]
    Rec --> Kids[Kids 5-6]
    Gym --> Competitive[Competitive Program]

They setup their default gateway as Main. For their recreational programs, they’d like each location to use its own gateway. For their competitive program, they’d like to use a different gateway.

On the payment gateway page, they would setup a category routing rule for the Recreational category. In the popup for the recreational category, they would select Mapleridge East and Mapleridge West as the locations. They would then select the gateway they want to use for each location.

They’d then setup a category routing rule for the Competitive Program category. In the popup for the competitive program category, they would select their competitive program gateway.

As the recreational category is a parent of the kindy and kids categories, the kindy and kids categories will inherit the gateway from the recreational category.

When a payment is processed for any recreational activity at Mapleridge East, Cadence will use the gateway for Mapleridge East. When a payment is processed for any recreational activity at Mapleridge West, Cadence will use the gateway for Mapleridge West. When a payment is processed for a competitive activity, Cadence will use the gateway set for the competitive program.

If they were to create a new category outside of both recreational and competitive programs, it would then use their Main gateway.

Guardian payment splits

When automatic collection runs, charges are grouped by payment gateway. Each guardian must have a saved payment method for that gateway.

If a guardian in a split lacks a valid method, your organisation’s policy controls the run:

• Block the run (default) - skip the family and notify guardians.
• Process available splits only - collect from guardians who have a valid payment method for the gateway, and skips any guardians who don’t have a valid payment method.

Configure this under Payment gateways > Gateway Settings > Missing split payment method.

Customer messages

Customise the short titles and body text shown when families add or verify payment methods, when automatic collection is blocked, or when checkout spans more than one payment processor.

Configure these once for your organisation under Payment gateways > Messages. Leave a field blank to use the Cadence default copy.

Supported Gateways

Stripe

Cadence supports Stripe via Stripe Connect. This is the recommended gateway for most organisations. From the settings page, you can create a Stripe Connect account. If you have an existing Stripe account, during Stripe’s onboarding process, you can select your existing account, and Stripe will attempt to copy your existing account details across.

Note: By default Stripe Link support is disabled. We recommend keeping this disabled if you use multiple payment gateways, as Stripe Link payment methods cannot be used across multiple Stripe Connect accounts.