For wedding and event venue software
Eighteen months of instalments. All of them scheduled by you.
Synapto is the embedded payments partner for UK wedding venue software. A deposit to hold the date, staged payments as the plan firms up, the balance before the day. That timeline is the core of your product, and the payments run through a gateway the venue connected itself.
How the money moves
The eighteen months of payments your software already tracks for every couple. Each stop is a deposit or instalment your venues collect today, through a provider each venue chose separately. We move wedding deposits and instalments onto payments inside your product: each venue is settled in full, and your margin is paid monthly.
The longest payment timeline in hospitality.
Almost nothing else in small business bills a customer across a year and a half for a single event. The booking fee lands when the couple books, then there are milestones as numbers and menus settle, then a balance that has to clear before the day with no argument.
And the sector's two peaks sit six months apart. Bookings cluster in engagement season, from late December to mid-February, with January the biggest month of the year. Final balances land across the summer, when the weddings actually happen. So a venue takes its bookings in the dark months and gets paid in the light ones, and its cash risk lives in the gap between them.
Your software is what makes that manageable: the schedule, the reminders, the record of what has been paid and what has not. The money itself goes elsewhere, on terms the venue accepted years ago, and the venue reconciles a gateway statement against your schedule by hand.
The commercials
What venue instalments can earn your platform
Most of your venues already take date deposits and staged balances from couples, each through a provider the venue chose on its own. We move them onto payments inside your product, in your name and in planned groups of venues, and build the deposit, instalment and final-balance products that keep them there. Each venue is settled in full on every instalment, and your margin is paid to you monthly.
A single wedding is a large sum collected in known instalments on known dates. For a platform that is a rare combination: high average value and a forward schedule you can actually see. It makes the revenue line substantial per customer rather than dependent on volume of transactions.
- Your own subscription revenue on agreed terms
- A share of every instalment your software already schedules
- High average value per event, not per transaction
- Pricing agreed to the venue's real annual volume
- Commercials in writing before you build anything
The rails
Failed instalments, followed up by us
The stakes here are unlike a missed subscription. If a saved card has expired or a scheduled instalment silently declines, somebody has a difficult conversation with a couple about their wedding. So the mechanics matter more than the rate.
Where a card expires between instalments, we are given the new details automatically, so the next scheduled payment goes through rather than failing. For venues that would rather collect instalments from a bank account, Direct Debit runs on UK rails on the same statement, and it does not expire at all.
- Scheduled card instalments, with expired cards refreshed automatically
- Direct Debit for instalment plans, on UK rails
- Clean refunds when a date moves or an event is cancelled
- One settlement, one statement, one person to call
The weight
Long-dated deposits and how risk checks work
Payment providers are wary of deposits taken long before the service is delivered, because a venue that closes leaves the provider carrying the refunds. That wariness is what produces held funds and rolling reserves, usually announced without warning.
We underwrite this at onboarding, with the venue's forward book understood, and we say up front what the arrangement is rather than changing it later. Disputes come to us by name.
- Forward bookings understood at underwriting, not flagged later
- Terms stated up front, including any reserve
- Disputes and cancellations handled by us, by name
- Merchant boarding and verification ours
From first call to first revenue
Book a payments review
Bring your venue count and a typical event value. We show you what the instalment schedule is worth, in writing.
Scope the integration
Scheduled instalments mapped onto how your product already models a booking timeline.
Board your venues
New venues payments-native from day one, existing ones moved for new bookings first so live weddings are never touched.
Earn across the schedule
Every instalment on one revenue line, with a named person looking after both of you.
Questions
No, and they should not. The sane migration is new bookings first, leaving existing schedules on the old arrangement until they complete. Nobody wants to be the reason a couple's payment plan changed halfway through.
It is the real risk in this sector and it is why underwriting matters more here than the headline rate. We assess it at onboarding, we tell the venue plainly what the arrangement is, and if a reserve applies it is stated in writing rather than sprung later.
The venue. Each 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.
Yes. Card and Direct Debit run on the same account and the same statement, so a couple can pay the deposit by card and the instalments from a bank account without the venue reconciling two systems.
A thirty-minute payments review
Bring your venue count and a typical event value. We will tell you what moving your wedding venues is worth and whether we are the right fit, including if we are not.