Problems with payment processing can have a real impact on the health of your church’s donation management, and of all the payment issues churches encounter expiring credit cards are the biggest problem.
A few years ago, Stripe introduced a groundbreaking new feature: automatic card replacements. In most cases, a saved credit card in Planning Center Giving will continue to work for recurring donations without donor-intervention, even if the physical card gets replaced by the donor's bank.
However, because not all banks and card networks support Stripe’s auto-update system, we made some changes in Giving to smooth over times when Stripe cannot automatically replace an expiring card.
New Card Detection: Whenever donors use a new card to donate, Giving will check to see if there is an existing card with an older expiration date. If one exists, the system will automatically swap out the old card for the new card and update payment for any existing donations.
Confirmation Emails: When a card is replaced, through Stripe's system or Giving's new card detector, we will send the donor an email letting them know. In the unlikely event the card was updated in error, the donor can correct the mistake. 99% of the time, though, they will just be happy to have one less place to update the card!
Proactive Expiration Emails: If a donor has a recurring donation on an expiring card, we will send a precautionary email at the beginning of the month the card expires so they can update the information themselves, just in case Stripe could not replace it and Giving does not detect a new card.
Bored? Perfect.
We think payment method management should be boring. Donors do not want to think about this stuff, and you don’t want to see donors’ giving interrupted due to something as simple as an expired credit card.
If you have any other ideas on how we can make payment processing as boring and uneventful as possible, please let us know! The Giving product team is on the other end of the ? button in the top right corner of Giving and ready to hear your idea.
Team Giving
DMa, Mo, Wassim, Josh, Caleb, and Jeremy