For class and activity software
You built the term billing. Your platform can earn on every collection.
Synapto is the embedded payments partner for UK class and activity software. Dance schools, swim schools, music tuition, drama, gymnastics. Registers, siblings, pro rata joiners, termly fees and a monthly Direct Debit. Your product handles every part of that except the money.
How the money moves
The term billing your software already runs for every school. Each stop is a collection your schools make today, through a Direct Debit or card provider each one set up separately. We move term fees onto payments inside your product: each school is settled in full, and your margin is paid monthly.
Direct Debit you connected, not Direct Debit you own.
This is a recurring billing business wearing a timetable, and it has a shape almost no other recurring business has: the person paying is not the person attending. A parent holds the mandate, a child holds the place, and the two only meet in your software. Nothing in a generic billing tool understands that a sibling discount, a mid-term start pro-rated to the remaining weeks, or a place held over the summer are all one family's account.
The other thing generic tools get wrong is the calendar. A term-time activity runs around thirty-nine weeks and is almost always collected over twelve equal months, which is the right way to bill it and the single thing parents query most. A schedule that cannot explain itself creates a phone call every August.
So most products in this space wire up a Direct Debit provider and a card gateway that the school connects itself. It works. It also means the mandate, the schedule and the retry logic are your product's problem while the economics belong to somebody else, and the school waits days for money that was collected on a fixed date you both knew about in advance.
The rails
Term fees on Direct Debit, run inside your software
For a fee that repeats every month at a known amount, Direct Debit is cheaper than card and it does not fail because a card expired. Where card is the right answer, for a taster session, a uniform order or a competition entry, it runs on the same account and the same statement.
When a parent's card does expire, we are given the new details automatically, so a saved-card payment keeps working instead of quietly failing in the middle of term.
- Direct Debit on UK rails, mandates and schedules through your product
- One mandate per paying parent, across every child and every class
- Variable amounts, so a mid-term start pro-rates rather than waits
- Card for taster sessions, kit and competition entries, same statement
- Expired cards refreshed automatically, no failed collections
- Settlement timing agreed with you, not imposed
The commercials
What term-fee collections can earn your platform
Most of your schools already collect term fees, each through a Direct Debit or card provider it set up on its own. We move them onto term billing inside your product, in your name and a group of schools at a time, and build the Direct Debit, retry and payout products that keep them there. Each school receives its term fees in full, and your margin is paid to you monthly.
Termly billing is the most forecastable money in small business. It arrives on the same dates, at similar amounts, from a base that turns over slowly. As a revenue line for a platform that is close to ideal, and it means the pricing your schools get can be agreed against a genuinely predictable total.
- Your own subscription revenue on agreed terms
- A share of the collections your software already schedules
- Revenue that repeats with the term, not with a sales push
- Pricing agreed to the whole base, not each small school alone
- Commercials in writing before you build anything
The weight
Failed collections, handled by us
When a mandate fails or a refund is late, the person who feels it is a principal who teaches all day and does the admin at night. They will ring somebody, and today that somebody is your support team explaining a payment provider they do not control.
Put the payments relationship here and they ring a named person who can see the collection and say what happened. Boarding and verification are ours too.
- An account manager your schools can phone
- Disputes, indemnity claims and refunds handled by us
- Merchant boarding and verification ours
- Your support queue stays about software
From first call to first revenue
Book a payments review
Bring your school count and a rough monthly collection total. We show you what it is worth, in writing.
Scope the integration
Mandates, schedules and retries, mapped onto how your product already models a term.
Board your schools
Between terms, not mid term. New schools payments-native from day one, existing ones migrated with their mandates.
Earn every month
A revenue line that repeats every term, and an account manager looking after both of you.
Questions
Existing mandates can usually be transferred rather than re-signed, which matters because asking hundreds of parents to set up a new Direct Debit is where migrations die. We will tell you honestly on the call what is transferable in your case and what is not.
For a fixed monthly fee, Direct Debit costs less and fails less. Cards expire, get replaced after fraud and get declined; a mandate does none of those things. Card still earns its place for one-off items, and both run on the same statement.
The school. Each one holds their own agreement and their money settles to their own bank account. We never hold their money and neither does your platform, so your regulatory position is unchanged.
Yes. Card for one-off and irregular items, Direct Debit for the repeating fee, both on the same account and the same statement so the school reconciles once.
A thirty-minute payments review
Bring your school count and a rough monthly collection total. We will tell you what moving your schools' term fees is worth and whether we are the right fit, including if we are not.