ContestPad provides the ability to integrate with the Stripe payment gateway and PayPal payment gateway to accept payments with entries into your contest or submit votes for payment.
This article will explain how to connect to the Stripe payment gateway.
You can set an entry or voting fee for your contest and collect money in real time using credit cards. Note ContestPad does not store credit card details in the platform. This is done using the PCI compliant Stripe payment gateway.
Also payment is only accepted based on the following:
The entry has uploaded successfully
A vote has passed voting validation and been accepted
The entry has been approved if moderation is turned on (please note that an entry must be accepted via the moderation queue in order for payment to be processed. It will not be processed if manually changed via the entry table).
If the entry has been rejected at moderation the payment will not be debited from the entrants credit card
Once payment is taken it can only be refunded via the Stripe dashboard
The payment gateway option connects to the Stripe payment service, so before you begin you will need to get an account setup on Stripe.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you copy a contest the payment gateway keys are not copied so please ensure you check any copied contests and implement the correct payment key if payments are required.
Once you have signed up for a Stripe account go to the settings section for the particular contest you want the payment gateway attached and select the Payment Gateway tab.
This is where you connect ContestPad to your Stripe payment gateway account.
The first thing you need to enter is the Stripe API keys. To get these login to your Stripe dashboard and select the Developer->API keys from the side menu.
Copy the Publishable key value and place this into the Public Key setting in the ContestPad dashboard. Then Reveal the Live key token and copy this key into the Private Key setting of the ContestPad dashboard.
Important: When the payment gateway feature is enabled in ContestPad it will validate real credit card details to accept payment. If you want to test the payment functionality using dummy credit cards, toggle the "Viewing Test data" switch.
This will display test API keys. Use these keys (instead of ones copied earlier). You can then use dummy credit card details to test payments are working as expected. For a full list of dummy credit cards go to : https://stripe.com/docs/testing
DO NOT USE REAL CREDIT CARD NUMBERS WHEN IN TEST MODE.
Once the Stripe API keys are entered update the following fields. These fields are used purely as information for your entrants receipts. This enabled them to identify the the payment information on the credit card statement and account details.
Merchant ID : An arbitrary code to identify your company
Merchant Name : The name of your company
Transaction description : A description of what the payment was for. In this area you can use substitute variables for Entry Name = {$contest_entry_title} and Entry ID = {$contest_entry_id}. This ensures the entry details submitted are included in the details.
Once this is all setup you are ready to start using the payment gateway.