Credit Card Template

Yep, that's exactly what the Credit Card Template is for. It lets you take the information entered in your Access database and send a one-time transaction to PayPal's Payflow Gateway Pro, so the user doesn't have to enter everything twice.

It is designed around PayPal's gateway, not Venmo. Venmo is owned by PayPal, but I don't know whether its current API supports this particular type of direct payment processing. You would need to check Venmo's developer documentation for that.

Also, for something like event registration, I would strongly recommend not storing card numbers in Access. A better approach is usually to send the user to a hosted payment page or use a payment processor's checkout system, then save only the payment confirmation or transaction ID in your database. That keeps the sensitive card information out of your database entirely.

If you want to store credit card information for recurring billing, for example, definitely use SQL Server with proper security.

Is there an established procedure using API to interact with PayPal or Venmo to record the taking of payments on line.?

Yep, it's all very well documented in PayPal's website instructions. I also cover it in the explainer video that goes with my template, including how to get it working step by step with Access.

My two cents is that unless I need a payment gateway 24/7 on my site, I wouldn't pay the high cost of a payment gateway and be burdened with the maintenance and coding that would come with it.  David says in his first post that this is an "occasional" need, so I would advise him to consider a cheaper and less complicated alternative.  If the goal is to put payment data into your Access database without manual entries, you could just download payment transactions from Paypal and import the CSV files into your Access database, which is all free.  Having people send money directly to your Paypal account is free too.  You wouldn't have worry about security, coding, and all the extra work.

Kevin's not wrong. It really depends on your needs. If you're processing a lot of transactions, then an automated solution may be worth the setup, maintenance, and any associated costs.

But if you only have a handful of payments here and there and don't mind handling them manually, then doing it by hand may be the better choice. Downloading PayPal transactions and importing the CSV file into Access is certainly a practical option.

It's the same decision as choosing between a spreadsheet and a full Access database. If you're only dealing with a couple dozen records once in a while, Excel may be perfectly adequate. I'm just giving you alternatives and options. Can you do it in Access? Absolutely. Do you need to? That's up to you.