In the Fall of 2019, on the advice of the merchant services company used by all of our leagues (Paysafe), inLeague updated our software to use Authorize.net as a back-end payment gateway in place of Firstdata, which had been in place since 2012. Paysafe had purchased our original merchant services partner, Flagship, and we were looking to modernize our payment platform.
The transition to Authorize.net exposed several problems with the payment ecosystem:
- Leagues were dependent upon account representatives at Paysafe for support. This was not a problem with Flagship, but the customer service experience with Paysafe was unpleasant across the board for our leagues and for us.
- Authorize.net has a limit of 120 days for all refunds. While we had been assured that this would be waived for our leagues, that turned out not to be the case, and the only workaround was inconsistent and not available to everyone.
- Establishing new accounts was cumbersome and confusing, with Paysafe pointing the finger at Authorize.net for configuration errors.
- While our leagues were nominally receiving some benefit from a group rate in card processing fees, it was impossible to determine the actual cost between byzantine monthly fees and a range of card fees.
inLeague conducted a thorough investigation of payment processing alternatives in the Spring of 2020 and is pleased to announce that we have negotiated a deal with Stripe that promises to reduce volunteer administration and improve the payment experience for leagues, treasurers, inLeague software developers, and end-users alike.