Handling fraud
While fraud in Planning Center Giving is incredibly rare, there's always a chance your church's Giving account could be susceptible to fraudulent activity. To try to prevent this, extreme measures are taken to ensure your profile data is protected from those with malicious intent. In addition, your donors' payment methods are stored outside of Giving, within Stripe, a Level 1 PCI Service Provider.
However, fraud can affect donors and churches alike, so there are steps both parties can take if they suspect fraud in a Giving account.
Steps for donors
If you believe your card or bank account has been used to make an unauthorized donation to a church you don’t recognize, there's a good chance your credit/debit card, bank account, or email address has been compromised.
Below are some recommended steps to help correct the situation and potentially prevent further fraud involving your information.
Contact your bank or credit card company immediately. Alert your bank or credit card company, and make a request to stop/reverse the charges.
Compromised banking information is often the result of a compromised email account. Review where and how the breach might have happened by checking your email account's access history. If you see recognized activity, update your password immediately.
Make sure to enable two-factor authentication for your email account if it's available. This will help to prevent your email from being compromised in the future.
Steps for churches
Contact the Planning Center support team right away if you notice that another organization listed on Planning Center is impersonating your church (your church identity has been used to create a fraudulent account).
Please provide as many details as you can, including:
The link to the donation form for the fraudulent organization.
How you discovered the potentially fraudulent account (searching for your church online, notified by a donor, etc.)
Fraud is not something Planning Center takes lightly, and we will do everything possible to help you get this issue resolved as quickly as possible.