How Does Stripe Work?
Stripe — what it is, how it works, and how to get your account set up.
This is an article to answer some common questions DonorSee Partners have about Stripe — what it is, how it works, and how to get your account set up.
What is Stripe?
Stripe is a digital payment processor. They are a bit like PayPal in that they help people pay and accept credit cards over the internet. Unlike PayPal, they offer robust integration tools that enable seamless digital experiences. If you've use Uber, Lyft, or Amazon, your payment was likely processed by Stripe.
DonorSee uses Stipe to offer a fully customized and world class payment experience to our donors. Strip handles all the financial information of the transaction - which gives donors total security. For example, we at DonorSee cannot see the actual credit card number of the transaction - only the last 4 digits.
How does Stripe work?
In order to use DonorSee, you need to create an account with Stripe so you can receive donations.
When a donor gives on DonorSee, that payment is processed by Stripe. The money goes from the donor's credit card to DonorSee's Stripe account. Stripe handles everything with the transaction and automatically takes a processing fee off the top and deducts DonorSee's overhead. The resulting donation is then received by your Stripe account. Finally, the donation is deposited into your bank account.
All donations are deposited in your Stripe account immediately after a donor gives on DonorSee. While the transaction from DonorSee to Stripe is nearly instantaneous, you can control how frequently you want Stripe to make deposits into your bank account. You can set the deposit to be instantaneous, daily, weekly, or monthly.
The exact deposit frequency options will be visible in your Stripe account and some options are restricted by your overall transaction volume. It generally takes one day for the funds to be received by your bank once the deposit is initiated. Stripe adds 7 day delay for your first deposit as part of it's anti-money-laundering efforts.
Here's an example:
Let's say you run a non-profit called Nutrition Hut and have set up your Stripe account to deposit once daily. You have a two baby formula projects on DonorSee — one for baby Adut and the other for baby Bintu. A donor named Dan feels compelled to help Adut and makes a gift of $200 to fund 50% of the project. As soon as Dan hits the 'donate' button, his gift is received in Nutrition Hut's Stripe account. (Behind the scenes, the overhead and credit card fees are taken out.) An hour later, another donor named Sally gives $50 for baby Bintu's project. Sally's donation fully funds baby Bintu's project.
At the end of the day, Stripe deposits Dan and Sally's gifts as a single lump sum into your bank account. The funds should be able to be withdrawn by the next day. All you then need to do is start implementing Bintu's funded project! You can also start working on Adut's project if you are able. Dan and Sally will automatically be sent receipts for their donations.
Whenever you want, you can download a .CSV report of all your DonorSee transactions. This report includes Donor Name, Date, Gift ID Number, Gift Amount, Overhead Fees, Net Gift Amount, project ID, and Project Title. Your Partner Coordinator for DonorSee can help you generate custom reports if needed.
A note about Stripe Fees:
Stripe charges a credit card processing fee of 2.9% and $0.30 per transaction. Because the thirty cents is a fixed amount, the exact percentage they take varies based on the size of the donation. Strip's fee structure is 2.9% + $0.30. So, on a $100 donation Stripe takes $3.20 - which is 3.2%. However, on a $5 donation, Stripe take $0.45 - which is 9%. The 6.25% is the average cost of the credit card fees based on real historic giving patterns on DonorSee. The breakdown of fees is all covered in the reports you can find on your DonorSee profile.
Who can use Stripe?
Stripe is a global company and is able to receive donations from anywhere in the world. However, you need to have a bank account from a country they support. They are constantly adding new countries and you can see the updated list at Stripe.com/global
Get your Stripe account set up
As part of setting up your DonorSee profile, you'll be prompted to connect your bank account. The below button on your profile links to Stripe where you can add your bank account info. We at DonorSee don't see your bank account information — all of that is handled by Stripe.
You can also go directly to Stripe.com and sign up there. Their sign up page should look like this:
It's really easy to set up a Stripe account. If you run into any questions, your Partner Coordinator would be happy to help. We at DonorSee will never ask for your Stripe login info. We will also never message you asking for your bank account information or any other sensitive account info.
If you don't have a Stripe account yet, please just follow one of the following guides we've written just for you:
If you already have a Stripe account, you need to "connect" your existing Stripe account with DonorSee's Stripe account. This allows Stripe to deposit the donation into your Stripe account. Alternatively, you can choose to create a new Stripe account if that works better for your accounting.
You can access Stripe's support documents here: support.stripe.com
Setting up your Stripe account is a one time thing and is required for you to fundraise on DonorSee. If you run into any problems or have any questions, we are here to help!
