We transitioned to Adyen in July 2023, and have been disappointed with the company thus far. In addition to sub-par reporting, Adyen imposes significant limitations on refund capabilities, with a cap of $5000, unless you pre-fund the amounts to your Adyen account. This cumbersome workaround process undermines the core benefits of engaging a merchant services provider.
This limitation highlights a critical need for adaptability managing refunds, particularly in light of the challenges posed by performance cancellations and other unpredictable circumstances. If we need to cancel an event due to weather or other unforeseen circumstances, we cannot wait 2-3 days to begin processing refunds because Adyen won't allow it unless the full amount is in our Adyen account. I am so grateful Adyen was not our processor during 2020 or 2021 because it would have been untenable. The lack of flexibility in Adyen's current setup prompts a reassessment of our approach to merchant services. Tessitura is aware of the issue and the challenges with Adyen. If you haven't made the switch to Tessitura Merchant Services, I would strongly recommend that you pause until the issues are addressed with the payment processor. Moreover, should there be an absence of significant improvement in service adaptability and responsiveness from Adyen, it would be prudent for Tessitura to reconsider its requirement that all organizations make the shift to Adyen. Allowing organizations the autonomy to select their merchant services provider would enable the selection of entities that are not only more aligned with their operational needs but also adhere to industry best practices.
I want to thank Phillip Parks for chiming in. He succinctly explained the refund details. Granted my org isn't the largest org, but I'm not understanding some of the hair on fire comments here. If you have less money in your account than the amount you are trying to access, then any banking institution is going to prevent the transaction(s) from going through. In early 2020, our CFO wouldn't let us process all of our refunds at one time. We had to process them in batches over several days. None of this feels very different than that experience. And hopefully we won't be cancelling entire productions any time soon. We were an early adopter of TMS and have been very happy with the decision. It has been so much better than any experience we ever had with WorldPay.While I don't disagree that members should be given the opportunity to select their payment processor from a short list. I also don't think that TMS is as problematic as some of you seem to fear.
It does come down to choice. I'd prefer to keep our funds in our own bank account and have them drawn from there. But each institution is different. And it may be that TMS can't keep up with our size.