- No monthly fee, no startup fee
- A standard 2.9% + $.30 per transaction fee, collected in the standard currency of the account (CAD or USD)
- Payments are transferred directly to your bank account within 48 hours.
- When members pay they don’t leave your site. For example, PayPal Standard forces a member to PayPal.com to finish a transaction.
- Recurring payments (aka scheduled payments) are supported.
- There are a variety of financial reports that are available.
- WildApricot provides integrated one-stop support for the product and the payment gateway.
- Currently, only US and Canada residents can apply for a Personify Payments account in USD or CAD currencies.
- For US and Canadian-based WildApricot customers, there is no payment system servicing fee.
As of October 1, 2018 only 4 payment gateways will remain — Personify Payments, various PayPal flavours, Stripe and Authorize.net. Our informed opinion is simple:
WildApricot customers should all consider moving to Personify Payments, the preferred payment gateway, as soon as possible.
We forecast that support for all other payment gateways will be discouraged and eventually WildApricot Payment gateway will be the only supported online payment mechanism.
UPDATE 1: As of April 2, 2019 a “payment system servicing fee” will apply to all WildApricot accounts that are not using Personify Payments. So if you are renewing your annual plan in early 2019 and you are a US or Canada-based WildApricot customer, it is highly recommended to switch to Personify Payments as soon as possible to avoid this service fee.
UPDATE 2: As of February 1, 2021 PayPal Checkout will be the only supported PayPal payment gateway on WildApricot. Accounts that haven’t made the switch to PayPal Checkout by February 1, 2021 will be automatically switched to accepting manual payments until they have switched to PayPal Checkout.
Update 3: WildApricot Customers using Stripe need to switch their WildApricot payment system to Stripe Connect by February 1, 2021. As of that date, WildApricot will stop supporting the legacy Stripe payment system.
Update 4: As of 2024 WildApricot Payments is now referred to Personify Payments available for US customers only. There is a separate Affinipay payment gateway available as well that supports both Canadian and US Customers.
Many Software as a Service products that offer financial support (eg online invoicing systems) are amalgamating support around 1 payment gateway due to the nature of the evolving markets and availability of specialized gateways like Affinipay. WildApricot has created not only a technical relationship with Affinipay, but a financial one as well. Affinipay incents WildApricot financially to use them as a gateway, and that helps WildApricot to continue to keep software subscription costs down. When using any other payment gateway, WildApricot does not get any financial incentives. With Affinipay, this changes forever as WildApricot receives a commission based on the volume of transactions that flow from WildApricot to Affinipay. In effect the more online transactions you pass through Personify Payments on your WildApricot website, the more money flows to WildApricot effectively subsidizing your monthly WildApricot fee — without costing you, the customer, one extra cent!
As a WildApricot customer, this only benefits you because not only can WildApricot focus on supporting just 1 payment gateway, but they can use the added revenue to create new features and benefits while working to keep the price of WildApricot low. This is smart business strategy, but it does create some uncertainty for current customers. We hope you will reach out to NewPath Consulting to assuage those fears and prepare to migrate your payment gateway when you are ready.
The Good
- USD and CAD accounts can be setup in 2-3 days using a simple onboarding form.
- Affinipay has an easy to use and secure dashboard
- You can send requests for payment (called Quick Bill) by email, and your customers can pay right from the email. This is an alternative of paying for an invoice directly from WildApricot.
- You can also charge credit cards on the fly using the virtual terminal feature
- You can make same day voids and refunds up to 6 months after the transaction
- Deposits happen daily – available in your bank account within 1-2 business days. All revenue is deposited in your bank account, and any transaction fees are subsequently withdrawn, so you can audit the full revenue received less the transaction fees.
- You can make same-day refunds at zero cost to you. All fees are refunded for a same-day refund.
Not so good
- For now the payment information collection is still done on a separate WildApricot payments page (payments.wildapricot.com). This is not ideal because setting up conversion and goal tracking is hard to do on a page you do not control. We are told this is required for PCI DSS compliance.
- There is currently no support for Interac transfers or debit cards in Canada.
- There is no support for many currencies such as the Euro. Currently only USD and CAD are supported. Organizations that require other currencies located outside of the US or Canada should use PayPal or Stripe, and will not be subject to the Payment Gateway Servicing Fee.
Ps. I made this handy dandy spreadsheet to evaluate whether it is worth it financially to switch. It depends on the number and size of your transaction volume and your current plan.
