You may remember our recent announcement about a change in Justgiving’s payment processor.
You may or may not also recall the line in Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi where she sings, “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”.
That refrain would be an appropriate sentiment in this instance, because it turns out that the service provided by the new payment processor (RBS Lynk Inc - RBS) did not meet the bespoke requirements we agreed, nor did it match our high expectations or the promised levels of support.
Our technical team worked extremely hard to make the change happen, but it just wasn’t the better service that we believed it was going to be.
We’ve discussed our concerns at length with the senior management team at RBS and they’re looking at how they could offer us a better support structure in future.
What does this mean for Justgiving?
We’re switching back to our previous payment processing partner (Barclaycard Merchant Services - BMS) for the majority of donations made on Justgiving, with only a small percentage of donations being processed through RBS.
This is so we can compare the two services for the foreseeable future and ensure that we make the right decision on which one to partner with in the long term. It also means that, if one of the services is experiencing downtime, we can switch to the other and make sure all donations made on the site are processed successfully.
At the same time, BMS is investing heavily in its platform and aiming to launch a much improved offering in the coming months.
What does this mean for your charity?
Another change in the card fees. Some not so good, some *very* good. But again, we’ve negotiated hard to get the best possible fees for you.
All fees exclude the need to have Verified by VISA (VBV) or MasterCard SecureCode (MCSC) on our website (except for Maestro where it is mandatory). They are the fees that BMS charge us and that we pass on to charities at cost:
• Credit cards (Visa/Mastercard) = 1.45% (previously 1.34% with RBS)
• Business credit cards (new card rate) = 1.85%
• Debit cards (Switch/Maestro/Solo) = 16.25p per donation (was 22p)
• Visa Delta/Visa Electron = 23p per donation (was 22p)
• Business debit cards (new card rate) = 30p
The credit card fee has gone up ever so slightly, but the Maestro rate is considerably less than it used to be.
We’ve analysed the last 3 months’ donations on the site and Maestro cards accounted for around a quarter of all donations - so the card fees charged to charities will, on the whole, be about the same.
What happens next?
We've only this week decided to switch back and confirmed it with the two services. The new card fees will take effect from today, Friday 5th September.
We’ll be monitoring the performance of both BMS and RBS to make sure we choose the one that will allow us to offer the best possible service to charities.
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