Our ORIGINS

ClubPay was launched in 2007. We started in grassroots sport, and we remain actively involved in local sport in a real, hands-on, day-to-day capacity.

This gives us a real-world perspective on the challenges facing amateur sports clubs and the hard-working volunteers who keep them running. It also drives us to ensure that our customers receive the sort of personalised, club-focused service that we would demand from an organisation entrusted with delivering critical elements of our Club's livelihood.

Origins and History

We started out in 2007 with our only goal being to make the running of our local club easier. Through word of mouth we slowly extended our customer base and for several years operated as an extended proof of concept, ensuring that we had a service that was robust, easy-to-use and delivered real benefit at an affordable price. In early 2011 we completed a consultation exercise with customers and embarked on a major redesign of our website that saw us 'go live' with the new design in September 2011. We further expanded and refreshed in 2017 to include new payment methods, recurring payments and further enhancements to reporting and manageability. For a more information regarding our origins, see our blog post The Origins of ClubPay

In 2020 we completely overhauled our approach and software - based on customer feedback - to deliver quick, easy, agile and fully integrated payment and data collection via drag-and-drop forms. ClubPay is now essentially a service that you can easily plug into your existing websites.

Inspiration

The inspiration for ClubPay - aside from a desire to avoid the divorce courts by spending less time on club business - was essentially frustration:

• Being forced to act like a small local bank – carrying lots of cash and cheques for extended periods
• Serial excuse-makers and repeated bad debts
• Unreliable, inefficient data collection
• Lack of auditability and manageability around both money and data
• One chance per year to gather data with which to better understand members – usually utterly wasted

Benefits

ClubPay provides its customers with a wide range of benefits including:

• Secure, reliable, efficient and accessible sales channels— 24x7x365 availability
• Simple, safe online payment and data collection integrated to your existing website
• Vastly reduced dependence on cheques and cash,
• Vastly increased transparency, accountability & auditability
• Real time financial management information and membership / contact lists
• Electronic collection and storage of NGB Accreditation data, e.g. ClubMark, Charter Club, etc
• Improved communication and interaction with members
• Opportunities for marketing associated and add-on products, e.g. Club Merchandise, event tickets, pre-paid blocks of coaching or match fees, etc

The relatively simple drive to automate and improve the way that money and data is collected by hard-working volunteers has seen ClubPay grow steadily, currently boasting a customer base that includes clubs, organisations and governing bodies across a range of sports.

Many of these clubs and organisations survive only thanks to the hard work, energy and enthusiasm of volunteer officials and administrators. Anything that allows that energy to be focused on developing the club, the sport and the players rather than on bureaucracy has to be a good thing.

ClubPay has been of massive benefit to our club and crucially, to its members. We believe that it can make a difference to your club too.