Platform Fees and Platform Charges give you the ability to collect your fees by adding it to a transaction. This request is sent simultaneous to the transaction being sent and is tied to that transaction. The amount you collect from Platform Billing is deposited to your bank account and is not shared with SportsPay.

The main difference between Platform Fees & Platform Charges is Platform Fees are paid by the cardholder and the amount is added on top of the base amount while Platform Charges are paid by the merchant and is deducted from the base amount.

When refunding a transaction that included a Platform Fee or Platform Charge, the Platform Fee or Platform Charge is not automatically refunded. Each respective field must be passed in the refund request. See below for more details.

❗️

A transaction can have either a Platform Fee or a Platform Charge. It cannot have both.

ℹ️

Platform Fee and Platform Charges can be used in conjunction with USERFEE.

You may pass a Platform Fee or Platform Charge along with a User Fee. These are two different functionalities that are compatible with one another.

Platform Fees

Add PLATFEE

To add a Platform Fee to a Direct Payment, simply add the field PLATFEE followed by the amount in cents. For example, here is how you would add a Platform Fee of $3.00:

Example Request

{
    "TERMID": "ABCD1234",
    "PASS": "mypass",
    "TYPE": "S",
    "TOKEN": "ABDFLJ234322334LJ",
    "AMT": 100.00,
    "PLATFEE": 3.00,
    "REF": "A1B2C3D4"
}

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When using Check UserFee API Call, be sure to include PLATFEE in the request so that the correct amount is calculated and returned in the response.

Refer to Platform Billing API Reference

Refund PLATFEE

When refunding a transaction and you also need to refund the PLATFEE, you must pass the field in the request just like you did for the Sale transaction. For example, below is how you would refund the above example transaction including the Platform Fee of $3.00.

Example Request

{
    "TERMID": "ABCD1234",
    "PASS": "mypass",
    "TYPE": "R",
    "AMT": 100.00,
    "PLATFEE": 3.00,
    "REF": "REFUNDA1B2C3D4"
}

Refer to Platform Billing API Reference

Platform Charges

Add PLATCHRG

To add a Platform Charge to a Direct Payment, simply add the field PLATCHRG followed by the amount in cents. For example, below is how you would add a Platform Charge of $3.00.

Example Request

{
    "TERMID": "ABCD1234",
    "PASS": "mypass",
    "TYPE": "S",
    "TOKEN": "ABDFLJ234322334LJ",
    "AMT": 100.00,
    "PLATCHRG": 3.00,
    "REF": "123456789"
}

Refer to Platform Billing API Reference

Refund PLATCHRG

When refunding a transaction and you also need to refund the PLATCHRG, you must pass the field in the request just like you did for the Sale transaction. For example, below is how you would refund the above example transaction including the Platform Charge of $3.00.

By refunding a Platform Charge, you are instructing the gateway to pull the indicated amount (i.e. $3.00 if passing PLATCHRG=3.00) from your platform's SportsPay account balance. If the original Sale transaction had a Platform Charge, but you do not include a Platform Charge in the Refund transaction, then the entire transaction amount will be pulled exclusively from the merchant's SportsPay account.

ℹ️

Pass any amount in the PLATCHRG when completing a Refund. It does not need to match the original Sale transaction,

When refunding a transaction that had a Platform Charge, you may want to have only part of the Platform Charge that was collected during the original Sale transaction refunded by you. For example, if the Platform Charge on the Sale transaction was $3.00, you may want to only refund $1.50 of it from your account, and have the merchant cover the remaining amount. This is achieved through passing PLATCHRG=1.50, and the gateway will automatically recover the remaining amount owing to the cardholder from the merchant's account.

Example Request

{
    "TERMID": "ABCD1234",
    "PASS": "mypass",
    "TYPE": "R",
    "AMT": 100.00,
    "PLATCHRG": 3.00,
    "REF": "REFUND123456789"
}

Refer to Platform Billing API Reference

Platform (Universal Field) - StartSession

Rather than passing PLATFEE and PLATCHRG, you can instead choose to pass the field PLATFORM when initiating a Re-Direct Payment using the StartSession API, and the gateway will determine if it should be a PLATFEE orPLATCHRG:

• If the merchant is on CustomerPay, the gateway applies the amount as a Platform Fee (PLATFEE) and adds it to the transaction amount (cardholder pays).
• If the merchant is on a Merchant Pay pricing model, the gateway applies the amount as a Platform Charge (PLATCHRG) and deducts it from the transaction amount (merchant pays).

This allows you to use a single field (PLATFORM) without needing to know the merchant’s billing type in advance.

Example StartSession Request

{
    "TERMID": "ABCD1234",
    "PASS": "mypass",
    "TYPE": "W",
    "ACTION": "STARTSESSION",
    "AMT": 100.00,
    "PLATFORM": 3.00,
    "REQUESTID": "REQ123456"
}

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You may still use PLATFEE or PLATCHRG explicitly in a StartSession request if you prefer, but PLATFORM is a universal field.