With the internet being so easily accessible, people like to visit their church’s website for many reasons. They enjoy keeping up to date with information that may have been shared during a missed church service. They also like to see what events are on the calendar. In many cases, they like to pay their tithes or make a donation, or perhaps buy a product that the church is offering like CDs or inspirational books.
There are many reasons why you will want to have your church website set up to accept payments. There can be a few potential areas of concern that you will need to be aware of so you can prevent any problems on your site.
Fear of identity theft:
One of the biggest concerns that individuals have when it comes to making any type of payment online is the fear that their information used to make the payments will become stolen. The first thing you need to do is to reassure your visitors that any personal information they are leaving on your site is totally secure.
Securing your site-
There are several steps that you can take to really enhance the security of your site. These are very important and most of them will help to keep you in compliance with the internet regulations for privacy and security.
Here are a couple of resources to check out for information regarding privacy and security:
https://www.truste.com/resources/privacy-best-practices/#eu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F8iPxs4naY
Make it easy to accept payments and donations
When your site is easy to use, it can increase the confidence of your parishioners when making donations. When the payment process is difficult or confusing, they can naturally become nervous. If the steps to make the payment are complicated or lengthy, they may get frustrated and choose not to complete the transaction.
With fear of identity theft and difficult payment options being the two main customer concerns, there is another potential problem to consider. This is in regard to your organization and your ability to develop a payment platform that is going to meet all of your needs.
There are many payment platforms to choose from but some of them can be rather difficult to set up and monitor. Secure options are often limited in what you can do in regard to accepting payments. They also lack in reporting features which makes it more difficult for you to track your accounting.
Following are some priorities to consider when selecting a payment platform.
- Easy integration and setup with your website
- The ability to integrate it with other software
- Compilation of all the transactions within your site
- A system that has SSL security built into it
- The ability to transfer data into a spreadsheet for easy accounting purposes
While it is of great importance to encourage online donations for your church, it is also essential that you have an easy but accurate way of tracking these payments and accounting for them properly. You need to focus on both the needs of your visitors, who wish to make online payments, as well as the administrative and accounting needs of your organization.
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