How do I sell tickets and items at the door?

If you don't have the app installed and signed in yet, start with I was invited to work an event. How do I get in? and come back here once you're set up.

Tap to Pay takes card payments on the phone itself. No reader, no extra hardware. Attendees tap a contactless card or their own phone against yours.

Set up before doors, not at them

Open the sell page once before the event starts. The first time you do, the phone provisions itself for card payments, which takes a minute or two. Doing that with a queue in front of you is a bad minute or two.

Not every phone can take payments. If yours can't, the app will tell you at this point, which is exactly when you want to find out rather than at the event start time.

Selling

The organizer decides what's available to you. You'll have preset items with fixed prices, the option to charge a custom amount, or both.

Pick the item or enter the amount, then have the attendee tap.

Where they tap matters, and it's different on each platform.

On iPhone, the reader sits at the top of the front of the phone, around the front camera. Hold the phone screen-up and have them lay the card flat across the top edge, roughly horizontal.

On Android, it's on the back, usually near the rear camera. Have them touch the card to the back of the phone rather than the screen.

Either way, hold the card still against the spot for a second or two rather than waving it past. If a card isn't registering, it's almost always being held against the wrong part of the phone, not a broken card or a broken app.

Worth doing a test tap on your own device before doors so you know exactly where the sweet spot is on the phone you'll be using.

Check what you're allowed to charge

Preset prices are set by the organizer. Custom amounts are not, which means the app won't stop you charging the wrong thing.

If you're not certain what something costs or whether you should be selling it at all, ask the organizer before the event. This is the single most common thing that goes wrong at a door.

Tips

Depending on how the organizer set things up, attendees may be prompted to leave a tip.

Tips are recorded separately from the sale, so the organizer can see exactly what came in. How tips are shared out is between you and the organizer. Gaytherings doesn't set, suggest, or take a position on any of that.

You need a connection

Unlike check-in, payments don't work offline. If the signal is bad where you're standing, tell the organizer before people start arriving rather than during.

Handling cards safely

Never take someone's card off them. Never write down, photograph, or type in card details. Tapping is the entire process, and anything beyond that isn't something you should be doing.

Tap to Pay is for this event only. Not another business, not your own card, not testing.

Cash isn't tracked

Anything taken in cash sits outside the app entirely. It won't appear in the organizer's reports or capacity counts, so agree beforehand how cash is handled if it's happening at all.

If something goes wrong

Ask the organizer. They can see transactions on their side, change what you have access to, and issue refunds, which you can't do from the app.

Updated on: 24/08/2026