Accepting donations via credit card can be confusing, but we make it simple. To accept credit card donations, you will need a payment processor to charge the cards and send you the money. The good news is that we provide you with a payment processor as part of GivingFuel called Webconnex Payments, enabling you to charge your customers' credit cards. As you publish your donation page for the first time, we'll guide you through a simple setup, and you'll be able to accept credit cards in just a few minutes.

One of the best things about GivingFuel is that funds from your donations go directly to you. This is unlike many other donation software company that acts as the middleman between you and your donors. In that situation, donors actually pay the software company (not you), they see the software company's name on their credit card statement (not yours), and then the software company holds your payouts for quite some time (which stinks).

So, in order to have funds go straight to you, GivingFuel requires you to have a payment processor (which we set up for you). A payment processor (sometimes also referred to as a merchant processor) is a company that works directly with credit card companies such as Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover to charge someone's credit card and then transfer the money to your bank account.

At GivingFuel, we offer a payment processing solution called Webconnex Payments, which is similar to other payment processors you may be familiar with, such as Stripe, Square, Paypal, or Wepay. To get started with Webconnex Payments, all you need to do is publish your donation page, and the system will guide you through a brief setup to start accepting credit card donations.

Credit card companies require all payment processors to have sellers complete a process known as KYC or "Know Your Customer" — which is industry jargon referring to a process that vets you as a real person or organization and ensures you are not engaged in any suspicious activities.

This process usually takes only a few minutes and involves three steps. The first step requires you to provide information about your organization, such as EIN number, address, year formed, and a few other basic questions.

The second part of the process verifies that you are a real person and requires basic information about you, such as name, address, birth date, phone number, and possibly your social security number. This is done to ensure you are a legitimate individual.

The final part requires you to provide direct deposit information so funds can be transferred to you. You will be asked to provide the bank name, routing number, account number, and account type. At this stage, you can also determine how often you want to receive payouts, which can be daily, weekly or monthly.

The good news is you can go live with your donation page and start accepting credit card donations with Webconnex Payments almost instantaneously without needing to verify your organization or identity upfront. However, you won't be able to receive your funds until you do. It is recommended that you verify yourself immediately, but you can have up to two weeks of accepting credit card donations before you need to verify yourself.

Be warned that the KYC process should be smooth sailing and a one-time process, but occasionally, payment processors may require additional documentation about you. This can be rare, but it means you need to provide some other form of documentation about yourself or your organization about your history because one or more pieces of information about you did not provide sufficient detail.

An increasingly less common way to process credit card payments is with something called a Merchant Account or Payment Gateway. A merchant account is typically a term for a kind of bank account that is purely used for credit/debit card processing and is usually more closely related to a bank such as Wells Fargo or Bank of America. Merchant accounts require another piece of software to process a credit card payment, and that is called a Payment Gateway. The most popular payment gateway in the world is called Authorize.net, but there are others such as NMI, Paya, Cybersource, First Data, and others. These payment gateways are connected to your merchant account, and credit card funds go into those accounts. If you already have a merchant account and a payment gateway, you might be able to use it to process payments with GivingFuel, as long as the gateway is supported by our list of Payment Processors.