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Connect every campus event to your university’s payment gateways

Finance connects its payment gateways and decides who has access. Departments link their events in a few clicks, without requiring university resources.

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Fourwaves finance dashboard listing four university payment gateways on TouchNet uPay, Stripe, Global Payments and Moneris, each delegated to departments, shared with a code, or both
Trusted by universities across the US and Canada

How university payment gateways work in Fourwaves

Finance sets up its gateways once, then every event on campus connects easily.

Finance connects

Connect any number of payment gateways from 7 different providers, then choose which event organizers have access on campus.

Organizers link their event

Organizers can connect autonomously or request access through a simple and customizable approval process.

Payments are reconciled easily

Attendees pay on the university’s gateway, funds settle in its merchant account, and finance reconciles from one export.

For finance teams

Centralize, control and reconcile every event payment

Your office holds the gateways and sets the rules. Departments run their own events, and every payment comes back with the codes you need to post it.

Every gateway and every event in one place

Connect any number of payment gateways to your finance organization, on any of the seven supported providers. One list shows every event linked to each gateway, across every department, with its status.

List of events linked to university payment gateways in Fourwaves, from the Faculty of Science, Graduate Studies and Alumni Relations, with linked, pending approval and approved statuses

Delegate a gateway, share its code, or both

Delegate a gateway to groups who use it on a regular basis and need autonomy. Others, like one-off events, can use the share code and be approved manually. One gateway can do both at once.

A Global Payments gateway in Fourwaves delegated to three university departments and shared with a share code at the same time

Approve requests, with a record of every decision

Each manual request arrives with the form filled in. Accept it or send it back with a correction note. No payment happens before you approve, and every decision records who made it and when.

Share-code request for a Moneris gateway pending approval, with the project code and cost center and buttons to accept or request a correction

Reconcile from one export

The transaction report covers every gateway and every department, filterable by gateway and by organization. The Excel export adds the request form data to each payment and refund, so every line lands on the right project and cost center.

Excel transaction export listing event payments from Stripe, Authorize.Net and Worldline gateways with the cost center of each event

Security and compliance for university finance

Finance and IT reviews ask the same four questions about event payments. Here are the short answers.

Funds settle in your merchant account

Attendee payments go straight to the gateway the university owns. Fourwaves never holds funds, so there is no payout to wait for.

Card data stays with your gateway

Your PCI DSS compliant gateway processes every card payment. With TouchNet, payers enter their card on the university’s hosted uPay page.

Credentials stay with finance

Delegated departments see a gateway read-only and never see its keys or site IDs. Each department sees only its own events and transactions.

Data hosted in Canada

Attendee data is hosted in Montreal, Canada, and a data processing agreement is available for your review.

For event organizers

Collect event payments without the back and forth

Your finance office has already connected the gateways. You simply choose one you’re approved for and open registration with full autonomy.

Connect your event in a few clicks

In your event’s payment settings, pick a gateway your finance office delegated to your department, or enter the share code it gave you. No merchant account to open, no API keys to copy, no IT ticket.

Read the setup guide
Event payment settings in Fourwaves listing the Stripe and TouchNet uPay gateways available to a department, with an option to enter a share code

Give finance what it needs, once

The connection request form asks for the project code, cost center or refund code your finance office needs. You fill it in once per event, so nobody chases you by email for an account number after the payments come in.

Connection request form for a TouchNet uPay gateway with a project code and a cost center filled in by the organizer

Let attendees pay by card on the university’s gateway

Attendees pay by credit card on the university’s gateway, right in the registration form. Receipts and invoices go out automatically, and you see who has paid in real time.

Explore our conference registration software
Registration checkout in Fourwaves with a full registration and a workshop totaling 425 dollars, paid by credit card

Send this page to your university finance office

Finance teams want to know how the money flows, who approves what and how it all reconciles. This page answers all of it.

Here’s how Fourwaves connects our campus events to the university’s payment gateways: https://fourwaves.com/university-payment-gateways/

Trusted by university finance teams and event organizers

Finance offices and event organizers at universities across the US and Canada run registrations and payments on Fourwaves.

The platform has considerably reduced the time spent on bank reconciliation. It takes me 10x less time than before.
Michelle Dufour - Financial services, Université Laval
Michelle Dufour

Financial services, Université Laval

Fourwaves is easy to use for both event organizers and finance teams, and all the information needed for accounting and reconciliation is centralized in one place.
Stéphanie Boucher - Financial resources services, Université de Sherbrooke
Stéphanie Boucher

Financial resources services, Université de Sherbrooke

Fourwaves is incredibly simple and organized. Administrative tasks, like processing refunds, were exceptionally easy to handle. It's a great platform.
Kenji Sugioka, PhD - UBC
Kenji Sugioka, PhD

UBC

We were using four different registration systems. We’ve consolidated everything with Fourwaves. It’s made everything so much easier.
Rhanee Palma - Operations & Events, UC Davis
Rhanee Palma

Operations & Events, UC Davis

We were very happy with Fourwaves! It was easy to use on the admin side, and participants appreciated the professional feel. The support team was outstanding, responsive, helpful, and always willing to assist. We’ll definitely be using Fourwaves again for future events.
Jason Blomquist - Boise State University
Jason Blomquist

Boise State University

The platform is easy to use, reasonably priced and the support team is very helpful. We faced no technical challenges at all. Fourwaves is a pleasure to work with!
Randy Gollub, MD, PhD - Harvard Medical School
Randy Gollub, MD, PhD

Harvard Medical School

We use Fourwaves for registrations and it has been well received by participants and its features have been helpful in organizing our registrant data. We appreciate all the help Fourwaves has continued to provide us.
Navroop Gosal

McMaster University

Frequently asked questions

Delegating a payment gateway in Fourwaves gives a department ongoing access: its events connect to the gateway as soon as the organizer decides to, with no approval step. Giving a gateway’s share code lets any organizer request access for an event, and that event needs the finance office’s approval before payments can start. One gateway can be delegated and shared with a code.

A university finance office can connect any number of payment gateways to Fourwaves, which can come from different providers and represent different merchants. Each gateway has its own name, default currency, request form and access rules. Finance sees every gateway in its dashboard, with every linked event and transaction.

Fourwaves supports seven payment gateway providers for university events: TouchNet uPay, Stripe, PayPal, Moneris, Global Payments, Authorize.Net and Worldline (formerly Bambora). A finance office can connect any number of gateways from these providers, and each one works with delegation, share codes and the connection request form.

An event organizer connects an event to the university’s payment gateway in Fourwaves from the event’s payment settings: pick a gateway delegated to their organization, or enter a share code received from finance. Finance can require a form to be filled in, for example to collect accounting codes. A delegated gateway connects as soon as the form is submitted, and a share-code request waits for finance’s approval. The organizer never handles merchant credentials, API keys or site IDs.

A university finance office keeps control of event payments in Fourwaves by choosing, gateway by gateway, which organizations connect their events on their own and which need an approval first. Finance connects its gateways and manages their sharing settings in one dashboard. Every event that connects can be required to fill in the gateway’s connection request form (project code, cost center, tax setup). Events from delegated organizations connect right away, while events connected with the share code wait for finance’s approval before they can take a payment. Delegated departments only see their own events and transactions, while finance sees every event and transaction across its gateways.

A finance team reconciles event payments in Fourwaves from one transaction report that covers every event on its gateways. Every payment and refund appears with the organization and event names. The report can be filtered by payment gateway, event or organization. The Excel export attaches the connection request form data (project code, cost center) to each transaction, so each one is matched to the right budget without an email thread per department.

Payments on Fourwaves are processed through a payment gateway the organizer or their institution owns, never through a Fourwaves account. Organizers connect their own gateway account (such as Stripe or PayPal), or use an institutional gateway that their university’s finance office connected to Fourwaves. Attendee payments go straight to that gateway, and the funds settle in the organizer’s or the university’s own merchant account.

Card payments on Fourwaves are processed by the university’s own PCI DSS compliant gateway, such as TouchNet, Stripe or Moneris, and Fourwaves never holds funds: payments settle directly in the university’s merchant accounts. Finance controls access. Attendee data is hosted in Montreal, Canada, and a data processing agreement is available.

Rolling out Fourwaves across campus does not require an IT project. Fourwaves is a hosted platform that runs in the browser, so there is nothing to install. The finance office connects its payment gateways once, then departments create their own accounts and events and connect them to a gateway themselves, and the Fourwaves support team helps organizers set up their events. Everything was built to minimize IT and finance involvement, reducing costs and making event organizers more autonomous while keeping control.

Fourwaves can integrate with a university’s financial system, such as Workday, and the integration is scoped and set up at the start of the partnership. Fourwaves also has a public API that pulls data from every event: form fields, registration and submission data, and the full program. The documentation is at api.fourwaves.com/documentation.

More about university payment gateways

What is payment gateway delegation for university events?

Payment gateway delegation is how a university finance office lets departments take event payments on the institution’s own merchant accounts without handing out gateway credentials. In Fourwaves, the finance office connects its payment gateways once in its own dashboard, then grants access gateway by gateway: organizations that have been delegated a payment gateway can link their events directly, without intervention from finance. Other organizers can request access using a public share code that finance approves.

Read more

Departments or groups sometimes have their own merchant accounts, process payments through them on a regular basis for multiple events and need autonomy connecting their events to them. At the same time, finance needs to keep access for bank reconciliation and auditing purposes.

A delegated department never has access to secret keys, site IDs or API tokens. The department or organization only sees its own events and transactions, while the finance office sees every event and every transaction on the gateway.

How do university payment gateways work in Fourwaves?

University payment gateways in Fourwaves work in five steps, from the finance office connecting a gateway to the payment settling in the university’s merchant account. Finance does the first two steps once, and organizers repeat the third for each event.

Read more
  1. Finance connects one or more gateways. In the finance organization, admins can connect as many payment gateways as needed and give each one a distinct name, for example “Central gateway” or “Faculty of Medicine”.
  2. Finance decides who uses each gateway. It delegates a gateway to one or more organizations on Fourwaves by email invitation and can give the gateway’s share code (shown as the sharing code in the app) to other organizers. One gateway can use both methods.
  3. The organizer links the event. In the event’s payment settings, the organizer picks a delegated gateway from their list or enters a share code, then fills in the connection request form finance set up (optional): project code, cost center, refund code, and so on.
  4. Finance approves the share-code requests, if any. Events linked through delegation connect immediately. Events linked with a share code wait until finance accepts the request or returns it with a correction note.
  5. Attendees pay and finance reconciles. Attendees pay by card on the university’s gateway, the funds settle in the university’s merchant account, and finance exports every transaction with the request form data attached.

Can one payment gateway be delegated and shared with a code at the same time?

One Fourwaves payment gateway can be delegated to departments and used through a share code at the same time, which makes the setup flexible. Most of the time, finance delegates each faculty its own merchant account and organizers connect to the central ones with the share code, but one single gateway can be used both ways.

Read more

Finance can also connect any number of gateways and set the access rules gateway by gateway: a TouchNet uPay site delegated to four faculties and shared by code, a Stripe account delegated only to the Faculty of Medicine, a Moneris store opened only by share code. A gateway can be delegated to several organizations, and each delegation invitation is a single-use link that expires after 30 days.

The connection request form applies to every event on the gateway, delegated or not, so finance collects the same accounting fields either way. Only the approval step differs.

Which payment gateways does Fourwaves support for universities?

Fourwaves supports seven payment gateway providers for university events: TouchNet uPay, Stripe, PayPal, Moneris, Global Payments, Authorize.Net and Worldline (formerly Bambora). Fourwaves is a TouchNet Ready Partner, and every provider works with delegation, share codes and the connection request form.

Read more

Each provider connects with its own credentials, entered once by finance and never shown to organizers: TouchNet with the TLink URL, uPay site URL and uPay site ID; Moneris with the store ID, API token and tokenization ID; Global Payments with an app ID and app key; Worldline (Bambora) with a merchant ID and API key; Authorize.Net with an API login ID, transaction key and public client key. Stripe and PayPal connect through their own websites.

Each gateway has a default currency.

Who approves an event’s connection to a university gateway?

The finance office approves an event’s connection to a university gateway only when the organizer used a share code. Events from departments the gateway is delegated to connect without an approval step. Approval in Fourwaves is a simple accept or reject: finance reviews the connection request form, if it asks any questions, and can request corrections, for example when the accounting codes provided are not correct.

Read more

When a share-code request arrives, finance is notified, reads the request form (project code, cost center, refund code, and at Quebec institutions the UBR), and either accepts it or returns it with a “correction required” status and a short message. The organizer edits and resubmits until the request is approved, and gets an email once it is accepted.

Each decision records who made it and when, which gives auditors a trail from every event to the person who opened it to payments.

How does a finance office reconcile event payments across departments?

A finance office reconciles event payments across departments in Fourwaves from one transaction report that covers every gateway it owns and every organization it delegated to. The report can be filtered by date, by gateway or by organization (department). The Excel export attaches the connection request form data, such as the project code and cost center, to each payment and refund, and lists the event name as well.

Read more

Because the accounting fields were collected when each event connected, a payment never arrives without its budget line, and finance matches each transaction to its project and cost center without an email thread per department. Fields with the same short label across gateways, for example “Accounting code”, merge into one column in the export.

Michelle Dufour, at Université Laval’s financial services, says bank reconciliation now takes her ten times less time than before. Read how Université Laval’s finance department reconciles event payments and how the Université de Sherbrooke finance team replaced manual bank transfers.

Does Fourwaves hold the money from university event payments?

Fourwaves never holds the money from university event payments: attendee payments go through the university’s own gateway, settle directly in the university’s merchant account and never go through Fourwaves. There is no Fourwaves payout to wait for, and funds arrive on the gateway’s usual settlement schedule.

Read more

Card data is handled by the gateway, which carries the PCI DSS compliance. With TouchNet, for example, event attendees enter their card on the university’s hosted uPay page and the card data never reaches Fourwaves. The university remains the merchant of record.

Attendee data is hosted in Montreal, Canada, and a data processing agreement is available.