[Updated 03/05/2025]

If you’ve been reading some of my blog-posts or watched any of my rambly youtube videos, you’ll know that I’ve been busy setting up an alternative payment gateway for my website – mainly to deal with my monthly studio memberships.

Simply put: Recent events made it very clear that I can’t rely on Stripe for my studio memberships – especially as a full-time paint-slinging internet-dwelling comic-artist. I want to use an alternate processor for that extra long-term safety and peace of mind over on my end. It also helps if said processor has better terms and fees.

By using Elavon!

This processor works with UK businesses, big and small. Yes, they even have one of those card machines that you can use at comic cons! Here’s mine!

I spent over a month going through all the checks and setup needed to be a Business Lady with them, and now here we are: With me being able to take in-person card payments at events and online orders through my shop!

The last – and most important – service is me being able to take Subscription Payments for my Studio Memberships!

Hrm.

So…

This is where we get to the clunky bit. Instead of it being a one-click-thing that you used to get with Stripe, you need to go for one of the tiers below and manually select Elavon as your payment method.

These are the steps:

Pick the Membership tier that you like!

Add it to your basket, check out and pick Elavon Payments:

This will bring you over to their payment portal where you do all the money and (hopefully) have it all go through smoothly and you’re done!

Over on my end, I still have to click to approve you, but there should be no error messages or anything for you, *touch wood*.

We’re currently ironing out some kinks, especially with UK members, but that should be resolved soon!

If you want to go for this payment processor, I can only thank you with my whole heart for choosing to navigate the online weeds with me!