Collections/Payment Processing

Click & Pledge, a software developer and payment processor for the nonprofit industry, will be showcasing its mobile payment application and mobile credit card reader, the Swiper 1™, at the upcoming Salesforce Dreamforce 2012 event in San Francisco Sept. 18-21. 

More and more religious instutions are using credit cards to collect donations at houses of worship. One big player is a service called ParishPay, which works with many Catholic churches and a few synagogues to help sign up worshipers to pay via credit or debit card or automatic payment from their bank accounts. Nearly 1,000 institutions have joined the service, and it claims a 20 percent to 30 percent increase in giving by individuals who enroll.

Another is SecureGive, which has kiosks in churches, Hindu temples and some zoos and hospitals, too.

Square, a mobile payments startup company, announced that political organizations can mobilize their campaign staffs and empower them to accept credit and debit card contributions on their mobile devices on behalf of their organizations. Political organizations authorize individual staff members to accept payments on behalf of their campaigns from their Square accounst. Once staff members sign up, they download the free Square Card Reader app and receive a free card reader. When staff members collect payments, funds are deposited in the campaign’s bank account the next business day.

Click & Pledge introduced the first “QR-PayCard,” a hybrid credit card payment alternative that integrates the convenience of QR code mobile phone scanning with pre-approved credit card payments and Salesforce.com. The QR-PayCard is designed for nonprofit and business applications. Each organization may custom design the QR-PayCard graphics to reflect its brand.

Sage North America announced it has partnered with numerous Girl Scout Councils to add mobile payment as an option for cookie sales. To date, 32 Girl Scout Councils in 23 states, representing more than 40,000 troops, can now use Sage Mobile Payments, Sage’s Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant mobile payments product.

Girl Scout Councils are primarily funded through the cookie program and fundraising activities.

Social media was a game-changing technology that helped alter the course of the 2008 presidential election. In 2012, mobile payments could be the transformational technology, as millions of political supporters are given the ability to collect money on smartphones for candidates. On Monday, President Obama’s re-election campaign announced that it would immediately begin using Square, a mobile payments start-up company, with campaign staffers and some approved volunteers.

Mitt Romney’s campaign plans to announced a similar Republican-themed Square application that will allow campaign officials to collect donations on a smartphone.

CDS Global, one of the nation’s largest billing and remittance processing providers, announces the acquisition of PayDQ, a leading provider of Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment (EBPP) solutions. This expansion to CDS Global’s product suite enables the organization to manage the comprehensive billing and payment processing needs of billers. From paper-based remittance processing and mailing services to e-billing and e-payments, including solutions for mobile, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), walk-in and remote deposit capture, CDS Global has become a one-stop shop for the marketplace.

Fundraisers typically don’t give much thought to this part of online donation processing systems until something goes wrong, as it has recently in several high-profile cases involving major for-profit companies. The reality is that online credit card processing is very safe and secure, thanks in large part to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) created by the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC).

WikiLeaks announced via Twitter that it will now be accepting donations of Bitcoins, a wholly digital and theoretically untraceable currency. Bitcoins are created with cryptographic functions and then stored and exchanged without the help of banks. So in theory the currency prevents any institution from tracking the flow of money, and prevents any bank from either blocking transfers to a certain party or freezing anyone’s account.

Corduro, a global mobile payments provider, announced its new app for iPhone and Android devices. For the first time, sole proprietors, charities or retail establishments can leverage reader-free card payments via smartphone and tablet devices at a sharply lower cost and enjoy a host of social integrations that turn recurring payments into long-term relationships. The app is also an e-wallet that facilitates easy and quick payments to any individual or business on the Corduro network.