Credit Card Processing

Credit Card processing in ExceedFurther is accomplished through iATS Payments, a provider of payment processing services for nonprofit organizations, or Stripe, an on-line credit card processor. You can learn more about iATS or Stripe at their websites: http://home.iatspayments.com/ or https://stripe.com/.

iATS and Stripe provide both the payment gateway and merchant account so your organization can process all major credit cards. Before you begin using iATS or Stripe, you must sign up for an account. You are provided with an agency code which you enter on the Client Defaults tab of the Admin tab. Each time you start a new ExceedFurther session that includes a credit card transaction, you enter your password. To get started, contact iATS or Stripe directly.

You can use credit card processing in several ways:

  1. Process credit cards directly from ExceedFurther as you enter gifts or guest payments. In this case, you enter a credit card number yourself and send it for processing. The result is returned immediately so you know if the transaction succeeded. This is described in more detail in Credit Card Transactions topic.
  2. Process recurring gifts from ExceedFurther using the Recurring Gift features. In this case you enter the credit card information as you set up the recurring gift. The credit card is then charged each month or whatever time interval you have added to the recurring gift setup.
  3. Process recurring gifts from ExceedFurther as above but instead of using a credit card number, you can debit your donor's bank account directly. ACH (automated clearing house) or direct debit is also known as PAD (preauthorized debit) or EFT (electronic funds transfer)
    1. Note that you can process recurring gift transactions yourself each time interval, using the Recurring Gift Manager, or you can set up the iATS transaction to automatically charge the credit card or bank account each time interval. These automatic transactions then appear in the Recurring Gift Manager as recurring payments as they are charged.
  4. If you are using Stripe, you can also set up a transaction to automatically charge the credit card on a regular time schedule, but you cannot tie this directly to the Recurring Gift Manager. You would have to manually record the transactions.
  5. No matter which option you select, you can keep track of these transactions and their resulting gift records through the Recurring Gift Manager.
  6. Process on-line donations through a Qgiv form. Qgiv is ExceedFurther's partner provider of on-line forms. When you use Qgiv forms, you can choose to use iATS as your credit card processor.

NOTE: when you enter a credit card number for iATS or Stripe for processing, either with a gift or guest payment or as part of a recurring gift, ExceedFurther sends that number for processing and stores a "token" that the processor returns. ExceedFurther never stores a full credit card number for longer than the time it takes to process.

YOU SHOULD NEVER ADD A CREDIT CARD NUMBER TO ANY NOTES OR DATA FIELD OTHER THAN THE CREDIT CARD FIELD SENT TO iATS or Stripe.

To get started with credit card processing, do the following:

  1. Contact iATS or Stripe to create an account.
    1. You are given an account code and a password.
  2. Go to the Client Defaults tab of the Admin tab and in the Gifts section, select the credit card processor you are using.
  3. Enter your iATS or Stripe account as the agent and add the password.
  4. If you wish to set up a separate iATS account for your recurring gifts (EFT), you can enter a separate agent code for that.
  5. If you select Credit Card as the Method when entering a gift, you are asked to supply the credit card information. This can then be processed immediately by iATS or Stripe. See Credit Card Transactions for more details.
  6. When you set up recurring gifts, enter a credit card or bank account number to be used for the gift.
  7. The first credit card you process during a session will prompt you for your iATS or Stripe password.