Payment Methods & Security

Checkout accepts all major cards, including Visa, Mastercard, and American Express, plus Apple Pay and Google Pay for one-tap purchases. All of them are processed through Stripe.

Which options appear is decided by your device rather than by the event. Apple Pay and Google Pay are offered in a row above the card form, and that row is hidden entirely when neither is available, since Apple Pay needs a supporting device and browser and Google Pay needs a browser with a card already saved to it. Stripe's own Link wallet is deliberately switched off across BrightStar, at both the payment request and the form itself, because buyers could not tell which of their saved cards it was about to charge.

Yes. Payments are processed through Stripe, a PCI-compliant payments provider, and your full card number never touches BrightStar's servers.

The card fields are rendered by Stripe inside the checkout page rather than by BrightStar, so what the page actually holds is a one-time secret for that specific payment plus a publishable key — never the card. The amount, the currency and every fee are fixed on the server before that secret is issued, which means nothing about the price can be altered from the browser. What BrightStar does attach to the payment is your name and email, so the record reads as a real person rather than an anonymous charge.

Charges usually appear as the event or organizer name, sometimes alongside BrightStar. That means the wording may not match what you expect if the event and organizer names differ.

The wording varies because the payment is not always taken by the same party. When the organizer's own payments account is fully active, the charge is created directly on it and carries their business details, so their name is what your bank sees. When that account is not yet active, the charge is created on BrightStar's account and the money is transferred on to the organizer afterwards, and the descriptor leans towards BrightStar. Either way the funds reach the same place; only the name on the line differs.

Check your confirmation email for the event name before disputing the charge with your bank, since charges often show the event or organizer name rather than BrightStar. You can also message the organizer, who can confirm the order in seconds.

Reaching the organizer first is usually faster than a bank dispute, and not only for you. A dispute is raised against the organizer's own payments account and BrightStar alerts them when one arrives, so the same person you would have messaged ends up handling it anyway, with less information to work from and after a delay. Messaging from the event page opens a thread they can reply to directly, and your confirmation email carries the event name and order reference they need to find the purchase.

A decline at BrightStar checkout is almost always your bank flagging an unfamiliar merchant rather than a problem with your card. Approving the charge with your bank, or switching to Apple Pay or Google Pay, usually clears it.

One thing worth knowing when you retry: the request that sets up your payment is keyed on the event, your email address and the exact tickets in your basket, so submitting the same order again reuses the same payment rather than opening a second one. A run of declines therefore does not leave a trail of duplicate pending charges on your card. Changing what is in the basket produces a different key, and that does start a fresh payment.