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The global pandemic has made businesses shift their operations online. This means that they now have to host meetings and events online and accept online payments.

Physical, in-person events will start again but online events are here to stay.

So businesses need to know how to adapt to these new circumstances. They need to be able to receive payments for their online events.

They also need to provide customizable event registrations and payment methods. This will allow attendees to register and pay for an event quickly.

Many collect money for an event by putting a registration form on an event landing page. Attendees input their information, add their billing details, and then make payments.

Businesses that charge an event entrance fee or sell items often use PayPal. Premier or Business PayPal accounts let registrants pay for tickets through PayPal.

How can businesses set up a PayPal account to collect money from events?

This article shows how to do it. It also explains why using PayPal for event registration is the best way to go.

Table of Contents

Why Businesses are Using PayPal for Event Registration

PayPal is an online payment system. Users can send money transfers to individuals and businesses.

It is considered to be a highly secure payment gateway. It is also available in many countries worldwide.

Many event organizers like PayPal because it is flexible. It accepts credit cards, debit cards, or PayPal balance payments.

Thus, event organizers can create an event registration form offering several payment method options.

Using PayPal for Event Registration

Businesses need to have a PayPal business account for event registration payments. Go to PayPal and sign up for a business account.

Those who already have a personal account can upgrade it to a business account.

Keep in mind that there will be some fees when using PayPal for event registration. There are fees for various services, but this is not unlike other payment gateways.

In the United States, money processing fees per transaction total about 3%. Stripe and PayPal have an average processing rate of 2.9% plus about 30 cents per transaction.

Check the PayPal fees page for a better understanding of their processing fees.

Using PayPal for Event Registration with Amelia

First of all, what’s Amelia and why should you care?

Amelia is a powerful WordPress booking plugin that works flawlessly with WordPress sites of all kinds. It has a minimal, yet powerful appointment booking interface designed to ease your workflow, automate repetitive tasks, avoid double booking, and make appointment booking a breeze for your customers.

You can even have email notifications and SMS notifications so that nobody forgets about their appointment bookings.

In order to book an appointment, the complete user interaction takes a few clicks with this WordPress plugin. Moreover, with it you can accept payments via PayPal and Stripe, perfect for those who want to pay in advance to book appointments.

As a business owner, you can monitor KPIs in the WordPress dashboard and analyze other important data to keep a pulse on your business. Amelia is a straightforward, no-nonsense booking calendar plugin and an amazing option for those who want an around-the-clock solution for their WordPress site.

Amelia also has an Events Calendar module integrated within its features.

You can now automate your event bookings as well. To be more precise, it means that you will be able to schedule a single day, a multi-day, and also recurring events with Amelia.

Did we mention that you can manage multiple locations and that you have Google Calendar integration?

All of these and much more are under only one license, no add-ons are needed.

To test things for yourself, I’d suggest checking out the demos and seeing how things look on the front end as well as in the back end.

What’s important for you is that Amelia allows users to integrate PayPal into an online registration form. So users can accept payments at the time of a booking.

Integrating PayPal is quite simple.

From Amelia, click on the Settings tab. Then click on the Payment settings link.

The payment settings allow users to choose which payment gateway they want to use.

It also allows them to choose the price format. The price format will be the same for the front-end and the back-end.

Payment Settings

Price Symbol Position

Under the payment settings, users can choose where a price symbol appears. There are four price symbol position options.

The price symbol can appear:

After the value
After the value and separated with a space
Before the value
Before the value and separated with a space

Now users can select the payment gateway they want to use. Select PayPal to use their services.

PayPal

To use PayPal’s services on your registration form, simply enable PayPal service. Next, choose between the options Live mode or Sandbox mode.

Live Mode

Live mode means that the PayPal account is active. Any transactions will go to financial institutions for processing and real money transferred.

To use Live mode, copy the Live Client ID and Live Secret from PayPal. Paste them under PayPal in the Payment settings on the Amelia plugin.

Sandbox Mode

Sandbox mode allows users to test the app before making it a live PayPal account. Users should only use Sandbox mode for testing purposes before activating the app.

To set up PayPal Sandbox settings follow these instructions:

Go to https://developer.paypal.com/developer/accountStatus/
Log in to the PayPal account
Under the Dashboard menu on the left, click on My Apps & Credentials
Under the REST API apps section, use the default app or create a new one
Then, copy the data from the Client ID field and the Secret field from your PayPal account
Paste it into the Sandbox PayPal payment settings on the Amelia settings page