Credit Card Declines Are Hurting Your Offertory

Is your eGiving provider properly managing credit card declines and expirations?

Credit cards are an essential part of eGiving – it’s an option that people appreciate, and those who give via credit card have higher average gifts. But our research shows that many churches do not have a plan to manage this critical source of income.

Here’s some reliable Faith Direct data to show you what a big financial loss this can be:

About 2.5% of credit card donations made through Faith Direct will be declined in any given transaction period. Church members give on average $31 for weekly offertory. So if a church with 250 credit card eGivers is averaging a loss of 2.5% because of credit card declines, they could be missing at least $10,000 a year in gifts that would otherwise be received.

Declines can happen for a variety of reasons – from outdated information or an expired card to insufficient funds in an account. Here are five things to consider as you confront this problem:

Who is responsible for decline notifications? Is this something your eGiving program manages, or are you responsible for letting eGivers know that their payments didn’t go through? How quickly are users notified? The sooner eGivers know there’s a problem with a donation, the quicker they can fix the problem and make their giving current. How are they being notified? Email alone isn’t enough – your program should send out both emails and letters letting eGivers know when a transaction is declined. Are donors being notified of an expiring card in advance? The more proactive you can be in letting people know that their card on file is about to expire, the better chance they’ll have of updating their information before a decline happens. What happens if someone does not respond to initial decline requests? Your eGiving program should have a consistent strategy for a follow-up plan to make sure eGivers know about the problem and have plenty of time to fix it.

Declined transactions don’t have to result in a decline in your offertory. If your eGiving program has a comprehensive strategy for dealing with declines and keeping members on their giving schedules, your offertory will stabilize providing your church with the consistent cash flow needed to operate your church and ministries.