Understanding Stripe
Stripe is one of the leading global payment gateway providers, allowing users to process & manage payment transactions within their digital and physical environments. Raisely’s partnership with Stripe allows for a simple, secure, and fast way to process your online donations.
Understanding how Stripe & Raisely work together will allow you to support your donors and database better.
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What is Stripe & is it secure?
Stripe is an online payment processing and credit card processing platform, handling payments for companies like Shopify and Uber. They process millions of transactions per day and are a Level 1 PCI Service Provider. You can explore more on Stripe’s security measures here.
How to setup a Stripe Account
To register a new Stripe account simply head to dashboard.stripe.com/register. Registration for business use will require identification documents and bank account deposit details, though the process is simple. This process is best done by your accounts team who will have these details at hand.
Stripe also offers discounted fees for non-for-profits. Simply email/connect with Stripe Support for more information about how to apply.
It is a good idea to setup multiple Stripe accounts if using Stripe for other payment processing opportunities, other than Raisely. This will help your reporting, reconciliation, and bank payouts be clearer and cleaner when working with Stripe. Find more information on multiple accounts here.
How to connect Raisely with your Stripe account
Once you have setup your Stripe account, adding Stripe to Raisely as a Payment Account is simple.
- Within your campaign, select Settings > Payments & Receipts, and select Connect New Account under Gateway Accounts. Select Stripe as the Payment Gateway you’d like to connect.
- You’ll be redirected to Stripe Connect where you’ll be prompted to enter your email address or login with an existing account.
- Follow the prompts within Stripe to setup your account. Once completed you’ll be redirected back to Raisely.
- You will now see your new Stripe account listed under Connected Accounts. Select Save Changes to save this account to your campaign.
Transactions with Stripe
Once you have connected your Stripe payment account in Raisely, your donations and other transactions will be processed through Stripe. Stripe's processing fee is charged on the total amount of the transaction, including the donation, other items, and (optional) Raisely fee.
You can view individual transactions within Stripe by searching for the donation in Raisely and selecting the Payment Method link. This will open a new window in Stripe where you can view the transaction information.
This is especially helpful if seeking to understand failed transactions. Copy the donor's email address from Raisely, and paste it into Stripe’s search bar to pull up transactions to see any decline errors. You can find Stripe’s decline code list here to understand more.
Raisely’s integration with Stripe allows for simple refunding through Raisely. You can search for the donation within your Campaign and select Process a Refund. This enables your team to support donors without needing access to Stripe.
Stripe & Raisely Reports
Donation Reports and Bank Payout Reports are common reports in Raisely when reconciling accounts or updating your CRM. Commonly used data fields in Donation Reports are:
- Amount: Donation amount made
- Total: Donation amount + (optional Raisely fee)
- Gateway Fee: Stripe fee taken from Total
- Net: Amount − Stripe Fee
FAQ
You will need to contact support@raisely.com to remove the duplicate account
Stripe fees are calculated on the total transaction amount, which includes both donation, other items, and (optional) Raisely fee. You can see the fee amount in Gateway Fee column in a Donation Report.
There may be times where Stripe restricts your account in order to validate the account's use. In those cases, Stripe will notify you beforehand, allowing you to get ahead of it. If you do find your account restricted, you will need to get in touch with Stripe.
At times, restrictions can be made due to fraudulent payments being detected. Here is a summary of Raisely's Fraud Protection setup that can be used when dealing with Stripe:
- Raisely uses an invisible captcha which works behind the scenes to avoid harming the experience for genuine donors, while making it very difficult for automated bots to abuse the form. This solves a challenge in the donor’s browser while they are filling out their form, and will vary the complexity of the challenge based on automatic fraud monitoring. The solution to this challenge is passed to our backend (Raisely) which then verifies its legitimacy. A challenge solution can only be used once.
- This challenge means it’s impractical for bots, API scripts, or even headless browsers to pretend to be real users without consuming large resources and running very slowly while minimising the impact on our real, human, end users.
- In addition to this invisible captcha, Raisely employs other bot detection technology including automatically banning an IP once Stripe detects a fraudulent donation, and banning small donations that are usually card testing
Do refer to our Fraud Protection guide for more information.
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