True story.
The former Pastor of my church (who retired two years ago) set up an Online Donation fund and began encouraging parishoners to begin making their weekly donations online.
Part of his thinking was that this would reduce the expense of having to mail out envelopes and process checks for deposit. It would also bring in a few more dollars perhaps from those who don’t attend church regularly.
After an audit from the Diocese the new pastor has announced that they are dropping the Online Donation plan and are asking everyone to go back to writing physical checks and putting them in the collection basket on Sunday.
The reason? The bank that was processing all of the online donations was charging a 5% fee.....$50 on every $1000 donated. You can print and mail a lotta envelopes for that!
I’ve helped several churches set up EBT donations, people make their donations directly from their checking account, and the processing fee was about 50 cents per transaction. That’s a great option; anything that uses a credit card you’re going to be paying a lot both in transaction fees, batch fees and the percentage.