For sports club and facility software
A club takes money three ways. Your platform can earn on all three.
Synapto is the embedded payments partner for UK sports club software. Annual or monthly subs, pay-and-play bookings on courts and pitches, and a bar or shop with a terminal from a different supplier. Your software is the club's system of record for all three.
How the money moves
The club year your software already runs. Each stop is subs, a booking or a bar payment your clubs take today, through a provider each committee arranged separately. We move subs, bookings and the bar onto payments inside your product: each club is settled in full, and your margin is paid monthly.
Three payment surfaces, three providers, one volunteer treasurer.
Clubs are unusual merchants. The subs are recurring and predictable. The court and pitch bookings are small, frequent and often taken by members at odd hours. The bar and the shop are card-present and busiest exactly when nobody wants to be reconciling anything.
Because those three surfaces were bought at different times from different people, the person holding it together is usually a part-time manager or a volunteer treasurer with three logins and a spreadsheet. Your software already knows what every one of those transactions was for.
The rails
One account across subs, bookings and the bar.
Subs collect by Direct Debit on UK rails, which for a fixed monthly amount costs less than card and does not fail when a card expires. Bookings take card online through your product. The bar and the shop run card machines on the same merchant account, so it all lands on one statement.
The date that matters is renewal. Most clubs still take the year's subs in one lump at the start of the season, which is the single largest bill a member gets and the reason people quietly drop out. Spreading it monthly is the retention argument your product can make, and it only works if the collection is reliable enough that the treasurer trusts it. Match fees and the odd whip-round stay on card, on the same account, because they are irregular by nature.
Where a card is saved for a member and the card expires, we are given the new details automatically, so a renewal does not fail silently in the closed season.
- Direct Debit for subs, on UK rails
- Card for pay-and-play bookings, through your product
- Card machines for the bar, the shop and the gate
- One settlement, one statement, one person to call
The commercials
What club payments can earn your platform
Most of your clubs already collect subs, match fees and bar takings, each through a provider the committee arranged on its own. We move them onto payments inside your product, in your name and in planned groups of clubs, and build the subs, booking and card machine products that keep them there. Each club is settled in full for its members' payments, and you receive your margin once a month.
Most platform payment stories only reach the online slice. Here the online slice is the smallest of the three. Covering subs, bookings and the card-present side turns a modest revenue line into a serious one, and gives the club a genuine reason to consolidate rather than a marginal one.
- Your own subscription revenue on agreed terms
- A share of subs, bookings and in person volume
- Pricing agreed across the whole base of clubs
- Revenue that repeats with the subs cycle
- Commercials in writing before you build anything
The weight
Payment support for volunteer treasurers, from us
When a collection fails or a refund is late, the caller is often someone doing this in the evening around a job. They need a person who can look at the payment and explain it, not a ticket reference.
Boarding a club with a committee, a constitution and no company accounts in the usual shape is also awkward, and that is our work rather than yours.
- Clubs, committees and unincorporated associations boarded by us
- A named person the treasurer can phone
- Disputes and indemnity claims handled here
- Next day replacement if a terminal fails on a match day
From first call to first revenue
Book a payments review
Bring your club count and a rough subs total. We show you what all three surfaces are worth, in writing.
Scope the integration
Subs and bookings through the API, terminals standalone or integrated, whichever suits your roadmap.
Board your clubs
In the closed season rather than mid-season, onboarded by us, mandates migrated where they can be.
Earn across the club
Subs, courts and the bar on one revenue line, with an account manager looking after both of you.
Questions
Usually not. Existing mandates can often be transferred rather than re-signed, which matters when the alternative is asking several hundred members to set up a new Direct Debit. We will tell you plainly what is transferable in your case.
Yes. Bookings alone are a real flow, particularly for floodlit courts and indoor pitches in winter. Subs and the bar make it larger, and you can add them later rather than up front.
The club. Each one holds its own merchant agreement and settles to its own bank account. We never hold their money and neither does your platform, so your regulatory position is unchanged.
It changes the paperwork rather than the answer. Charities and community amateur sports clubs board here regularly, and we handle the differences in verification rather than sending the treasurer round in circles.
A thirty-minute payments review
Bring your club count and a rough subs total. We will tell you what moving your clubs is worth and whether we are the right fit, including if we are not.