How to sell event photos to guests with mobile money

Selling is optional, and the price is yours

In Aurant, a gallery is first a way to deliver. Selling downloads is a switch you turn on for one gallery at a time, when it makes sense. You set the prices. Aurant takes no cut of your sales; the payment provider you connect charges its own processing fees, as it would anywhere else.

Selling gallery downloads is included from the Basic plan up. If the organiser has already paid for the coverage, deliver their photos in a separate gallery with free downloads, and turn on sales only in the gallery you share with guests: while sales are on, visitors download only what they have bought.

What your guests see

1. They scan your QR code or open the link, and browse the gallery on their phone.
2. They choose the full gallery, a single photo, or a selection of photos.
3. They give their name and email: the purchase and the receipt are linked to that address. No account, no password.
4. They pick a payment method among the providers you have connected for the gallery's currency, and finish paying on the provider's secure page.
5. They come back to the gallery with their downloads unlocked, and a receipt arrives by email.

Connect the payment provider that fits your country

The workspace owner connects providers once, in the payment settings. Buyers then see every connected provider that supports the gallery's currency. The provider pays you directly:

• Paystack: cards, bank and mobile money in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa (NGN, GHS, KES, ZAR). You choose your bank and enter your account number, Aurant checks the account holder's name, and Paystack settles your sales to that account, minus its fees.
• Flutterwave: cards and mobile money across Africa, including CFA francs (XOF, XAF), as well as NGN, GHS, KES, ZAR, UGX, TZS and RWF, and USD, EUR and GBP. It connects to your bank account the same way.
• CinetPay: mobile money and cards in francophone Africa (XOF and XAF, and also CDF and GNF). You paste the keys from your own CinetPay merchant account, and payments go straight into it.
• Stripe: cards in USD, EUR, GBP, CAD and AUD, paid out to your own Stripe account.

Which wallets will guests see? The methods on the checkout page come from the provider, not from Aurant. They depend on the country, the currency and what is switched on for your merchant account: for example M-Pesa in Kenya, MTN MoMo in Ghana, or Orange Money and Wave in CFA franc countries, alongside cards. Before the event, ask your provider which methods your account accepts, then make one small purchase yourself with the wallet most of your guests use.

Set your prices

• Full gallery, per photo, or both. Leave one price empty to sell only the other way.
• Currency rules. XOF and XAF have no decimals, so prices are whole amounts. CinetPay only accepts CFA franc amounts that are multiples of 5, so keep your prices on multiples of 5.
• What buyers get. Web size (a 2048 px JPEG, right for phones and social media), the original file, or both, with the buyer choosing at each download.
• Fair by design. If someone picks photos that would cost at least the full gallery, they get the full gallery for its price. Photos they already own are never charged twice.

There is no magic number for the price itself. One useful test: a single photo should cost what a guest pays without thinking twice, and the full gallery should make sense for a family or a group of friends who want the whole night.

Protect the photos you sell

While sales are on, visitors can download only what they have bought, whatever the gallery's free download settings say. You and your team are never charged.

A watermark makes screenshots less tempting. Use your text, your studio logo or an uploaded image, and set its position, opacity and size, or tile it across the photo. Web-size downloads carry the watermark and originals never do, so in a watermarked sales gallery, offer the original (or both) to give buyers a clean file.

Help guests find themselves with face search

In a gallery of several hundred photos, most guests are looking for one thing: themselves. With face search on, guests tap Find photos of me, take a selfie and see only the photos they appear in.

• Each guest is told what face search does and must tick a consent box first. The selfie is used for that search only and is never stored.
• The gallery's face index is deleted when you turn face search off, when you delete the gallery, and when it expires.
• Face search is included from the Basic plan, within limits. On Basic: up to 500 photos indexed per gallery, 2,000 per month, and 100 guest searches per gallery per day; Pro and Ultimate have higher limits. Photos beyond the limit are not indexed, and the gallery tells you how many were skipped.

An event-day checklist

1. A few days before: connect your provider, check that your account is ready to take payments, and make a small purchase to test it.
2. Create the gallery, then set the currency, prices, download sizes and watermark.
3. Download the gallery's QR code and print it on a table card or the back of the programme.
4. On the night, upload a first selection so guests can browse while the event is still fresh.
5. Turn on face search for the gallery, if your plan includes it.
6. Afterwards, follow the gallery's Sales tab: buyer, what they bought, amount and status. Refunds go back through the provider; CinetPay payments are refunded from CinetPay's own dashboard.
7. When you are done, turn sales off or let the gallery expire.

What it costs you

Two things: your Aurant plan, and the provider's fees on each sale. Aurant takes no commission on what you sell. Plans can be paid in local currency: by mobile money or card in KES (M-Pesa), GHS, XOF and XAF, and by card or bank transfer in NGN. They are prepaid and never renew automatically, so nothing leaves your wallet without you. Current prices are on the pricing page, and the guide to sending a client gallery covers the rest of the gallery settings.