At Payfast we believe that the best way to showcase our products is to demonstrate how our merchants are using them as a payment solution for their online businesses. We recently sat down with Albertus Potgieter, Managing Director at iTickets South Africa, to find out about the event ticketing platform’s experience of being an early adopter of our new Split Payments feature.
Jire iTickets (Pty) Ltd, trading as iTickets.co.za, was established in 2006 as an online event ticketing platform catering primarily to family-friendly entertainment. The platform has a user-friendly interface that allows shoppers to easily browse and purchase event tickets through an intuitive checkout process, and offers a convenient print-at-home ticketing service.
For event organisers, iTickets provides an ecommerce platform for them to sell their tickets online. Once they register their event on the platform, iTickets manages and sells the tickets to the events on their behalf.
“When event organisers select iTickets as their event ticketing partner, we provide them with a number of important services. First of all, we manage all aspects of ticket sales. This includes collecting funds on their behalf and paying out event income to them following the event’s completion. In the case where an event is cancelled, iTickets facilitate refunds to customers on behalf of the event owner,” said Albertus.
“iTickets also provides equipment and personnel on the day of the event to validate tickets; and following the event we provide consolidation reports. It’s also worth mentioning that all transactions are logged on the iTickets system where detailed order records may be retrieved at any point in time. This real-time monitoring and tracking of sales is a great resource for event organisers selling on our platform, as it enables them to better manage their business and finances,” continued Albertus.
Choosing Payfast as their online payment solution
iTickets are proud of the fact that they continually investigate new payment options, but ultimately stick with what is most user-friendly. iTickets initially integrated with Payfast in 2018 as an additional payment gateway to support ticket buyers who make use of debit card, Instant EFT and credit card payments.
While this was the initial reason why they chose Payfast as an online payment solution, Albertus explained that Payfast soon became valuable for another reason. “iTickets generates revenue by charging a commission on each ticket sold on our platform. The commission fees are deducted before the ticket funds are allocated to the event organiser, post-event,” said Albertus.
“However, some promoters need to receive funds immediately for their events, like in instances where they need cash flow to secure a venue or if they are unable to secure event sponsorships. We therefore required a solution that could instantly split a payment from a ticket sale between us – to get our commission – and the event organiser,” continued Albertus.
Split Payments by Payfast was the solution that they were looking for. With a custom integration, iTickets now has the ability to instantly split out their commission each time a ticket is bought on their platform, while the rest of the payment goes directly to the selected event organiser.
“With Split Payments every time a ticket is purchased, we instantly receive our portion of the event fees and selected event organisers receive their necessary cash flow. They are empowered to make event related payments on time and our financial admin has been drastically lightened, so it’s a win-win situation for everyone,” said Albertus.
“The response to Split Payments has been very positive from event organisers who require the functionality, and I would highly recommend it for platform-based businesses,” concluded Albertus.
As one of the first early adopters of Split Payments, it’s amazing to hear how iTickets is spearheading its use in the ecommerce platform space. With the summer season upon us, they now have an extra tool at their disposal to streamline ticket sales for all of the fun, family-orientated events that they are listing on their platform.
Find out more about Split Payments here.
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