Manually process online donations
The safest and easiest way to collect online donations is through your donation form. This sends payment details directly to the processor, keeps the information private, reduces your church’s liability, and helps prevent staff errors.
It's not secure.
Having donors write their whole card number, expiration date, and CVV code on an envelope is like handing over a copy of their card. Over the past few years, concerns about credit card fraud have been growing.
Security breaches involving cardholder data have been widely publicized and are becoming more and more common. This is particularly risky for debit cards since real, irrecoverable money can be stolen from a donor if the number is leaked.
It's not compliant.
If you handle donor credit cards, VISA, MasterCard, and American Express require that you do so in a PCI compliant way. If your donors use the online donor interface on Church Center to donate, your church can accept credit card donations without handling the credit cards themselves. In fact, Planning Center Giving doesn't even store them. Instead, they are stored by Stripe, which powers Planning Center Payments, and is a fully PCI compliant payment processor.
When you store credit card information on paper, you enter a world of compliance concerns. You have to worry about how long you store that paper, the paper's chain of custody, and even the type of shredder used to destroy it.
It discourages giving.
Here are two major trends happening in the charitable giving world. First, people are using credit and debit cards to donate a lot more than cash and checks. Many donors no longer carry checkbooks and cash.
Secondly, people are becoming increasingly aware that identity theft and credit card fraud are legitimate concerns in today's world. Donors want secure ways of using their cards.
Keeping the points above in mind, if you have a donor contact you directly with their card information, you can manually process an online donation by following these steps:
Manual processing should be rare
Unless it’s an emergency, don’t collect, store, or manually process someone’s card information. Handling credit card information typically violates PCI compliance and increases your church’s risk. For security and everyone’s peace of mind, encourage donors to give through your secure donation form instead.
In Church Center, donors can add their payment methods to their profile, ensuring their information remains secure and compliant. If a donor needs help adding their payment method, send them the Add and manage payment methods article.
Best practices before you manually process a donation
If a donor contacts you directly with their card information and you must process a donation:
Understand the risks: Review the “Why you should avoid manually collecting financial data” section above.
Use sparingly: Only process manually when no other option is available. Try to point donors to Church Center, where they can handle this themselves.
Things to know:
Administrators can only add debit or credit cards to a donor's profile.
Donors must add bank accounts themselves before they can be used. If they want to give with a bank account, they must be the one to add that information to their donor profile.
Donors must have an email address in their profile before adding a payment method, so they can be contacted if any issues arise.
Processing ACH donations: While you, a Giving administrator, cannot add a bank account, once a donor adds and verifies their bank account, administrators can select that bank account as a payment method to initiate a donation.
Add a payment method and manually add donation
If you've determined that you must manually process an online donation after reading all the information in this article, follow the steps below.
In Giving, select the People page in the top navigation.
Select the donor to open their profile.
Select the Pay Methods tab.
Select the Add credit/debit card button on the right side.
Enter the card number, expiration date, and CVC number.
Select the Save button.
To process the donation, select the Donations tab.
Select the New monetary donation button on the right side.
Enter the payment method, amount, and fund.
Select the Submit button.
The donation will process immediately, and the donor will receive a receipt for the transaction.