PayGate helps iTickets deliver convenience to its customers

Online ticket sales have come a long way in South Africa in the past few years – thanks in part to relative newcomer iTickets, which pioneered the print-at-home ticket with the help of its payment service provider PayGate.

“When we bought the African rights from iTickets.com based in the USA and launched in 2007, people were used to visit a walk-in kiosk to pick up their tickets even after they’d paid for them,” says directors Albertus Potgieter and Corne Prinsloo. “We’ve made it our mission to make life more convenient by enabling customers to print their tickets as soon as they’d paid for them. The public perception is finally shifting – more and more people want to get their tickets by email or print them directly from their browser.”

To achieve this goal, iTickets has worked closely with PayGate first to accept credit card transactions and now to process direct funds transfers as well. Until very recently, says Prinsloo, “if a customer didn’t have a credit card they had no option except going into the bank to make a direct deposit, or making an EFT via online banking. That made the whole process much less convenient.”

Now, however, “all the major banks are linked to SID, which allows people to make instant EFTs from our website,” says Potgieter. “It’s highly secure for the customer, and we get instant payment confirmation so they can download their tickets. PayGate recommended SID to us and has enabled us to add it to our payment options completely painlessly.”

Potgieter adds that PayGate has actively helped iTickets manage payment security and reduce the risk of card fraud. “We find that the bigger the event, like the Top Gear event at Moses Mabhida stadium in June 2012 we’ve hosted, the more likely we are to have problems. PayGate filters out a lot of fake cards and cards without funds for us – it’s a huge issue.”

iTickets has also recently signed up for the 3D Secure service offered by Visa and Mastercard, on PayGate’s recommendation. “It’s now become almost imperative for merchants like us to have 3D Secure as a way to protect ourselves against fraud,”

“PayGate has always addressed our needs very well”. “We’ve had others try to win the business from us, but transparency and integrity are absolutely critical when it comes to choosing a payment service provider. PayGate has a superb reputation and a very good relationship with us.”