With "Online Bridge", clubs have gone in many directions to overcome the issue of having to charge their players for playing in "Online Bridge".
There are basically 3 ways of tackling this
1) The first method of "Buying a Ticket" is similar to buying a ticket to the theatre, a cinema or a sports events. A person would log in to an online site such as TicketMaster and buy a ticket. The person is issued with a ticket and TicketMaster provides a list of tickets sold and hand over the payments received less commission before the event. It is then up to the Venue to monitor people arriving that they have a valid ticket. It will also be necessary to handle refunds etc.
2) The second of "Paying Upfront" is similar. The difference is that the club manually checks the payments against the attendees before commencing. A Payment button alone does not help in reconciling payments. Feedback from clubs is that Payment Buttons Software is expensive in that the Payment company takes a significant percentage for every transactions.
3) The third method is to "Allow players to participate, regardless of Credit", subject to the club rules. Then keep track of who has participated and ask them to pay at the end of the month for the events they have participated in.
We have decided that the method most suited to Bridgewebs is the third method. So, since the Autumn 2020 we have extended the "Competition - Attendance" feature to a new "Attendance Module" which has been developed to provide the necessary to monitor Session Costs and Payments, i.e. a Mini Player Accounting system. The club will arrange a suitable method for players to pay the club on a monthly basis, generally "Online Banking", then as necessary will upload the list of payments to Bridgewebs and Bridgewebs will match these to the Sessions played. At the end of the month Bridgewbs will provide the players with a "Statement" of their current position "Balance"
We are being cautious and low-key about this because when it comes to Money, people can get quite upset if they are informed they owe money when they do not.
If the club would like to try out the "Attendance Module", please contact Bridgewebs via the "Web Administration Request" option to request the "Attendance Module" to be added to "Web Administration" options provided through the latest Release "2.19p".
If the club wish to continue using the "Attendance Module" after you have had a look, there will be an additional cost of £2/£3 per month equivalent, added to the subscription at renewal. This is felt necessary to cover the increase in databases, processing costs, increased usage of Email and general Support.
As a future extension, if there is sufficient demand, we will look at providing an interface to Payment Button providers such as PayPal or Stripe, BUT paid to an account opened by the club. However, we have no plans for a full "Payment Processing" system, that would require PCI DSS compliance with the Regulators and that is an expensive process. Any system for collecting money on behalf of other organisations is fraught with issues and we certainly would not want to be responsible for everything that goes with that, such as collecting and distributing tens of thousands of pounds and the pitfalls of Data Protection and issuing Refunds. It would be necessary to obtain an accreditation similar to ATOL protection for the Holiday Industry. We leave that to the bigger companies such as Ticketmaster, PayPal and others.