How do I get credit card transaction processing set up for a charity auction. By tomorrow night.

December 7, 2007 2:08 PM

How do I get credit card transaction processing set up for a charity auction. By tomorrow night.

I and my mother have been helping a man from Bethlehem for the past couple of years. He is affiliated with an 'orphanage' in Palestine that does many good works for PTSD-afflicted children of all religious backgrounds.

Last year, we helped him set up a US non-profit for this organization. He has the tax ID #.

Tomorrow night he is hosting a fairly large charity auction in Seattle, but he has forgotten or been somehow unable to secure any kind of transaction processing capability.

I know that the non-profit banks with Bank of America. Does he have any hope here? Even just getting a carbon-impression machine and manually calling the deals in at the end of the night?

Any help at all would be tremendously appreciated, and my apologies for the short notice. I learned of this problem about 20 minutes ago, and I'm 4 hours away from Seattle, but I will be there by about noon tomorrow.

posted by Roach to work & money (11 comments total)

How about sign up for PayPal and have a laptop with WiFi access it.
posted by zeoslap at 2:10 PM on December 7, 2007

I'd look at Amazon Payments and PayPal.

You don't have enough time to set up a merchant account if they don't already have one.
posted by Tacos Are Pretty Great at 2:14 PM on December 7, 2007

I'd say don't try. Use Paypal.
posted by rokusan at 2:19 PM on December 7, 2007

I've used Justgiving in the past and it works great, I think you can either use it as a registered charity or just sign up to accept personal payments as well.
posted by ukdanae at 2:19 PM on December 7, 2007

Thanks for the quick answers!

With PayPal, if he doesn't have an account tied to a bank account already, doesn't it take a few days for that "marriage" to occur?

Also, would he hand-key the person's CC# into his PayPal account at the end of the night?
posted by Roach at 2:21 PM on December 7, 2007

If he has nonprofit status in the US, I'd say setup Google Checkout. It's still work hours for a little while in California, get cracking!

http://checkout.google.com/seller/npo/
posted by advicepig at 2:31 PM on December 7, 2007

I've used propay to process credit card transactions. There's a $30 set up fee and you'll need a manual imprinter, but then you can process the cards online or over the phone. You should be able to get it set up by tomorrow if you have all the information you need.
posted by logic vs love at 2:37 PM on December 7, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Groundspring offers inexpensive credit card processing services for charities and non-profits, and may well be able to set you up quickly.
posted by eschatfische at 2:42 PM on December 7, 2007

You can use PayPal to process people's CCs on the spot with their Virtual Terminal.
posted by zsazsa at 2:58 PM on December 7, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

yeah, PayPal
posted by matteo at 3:11 PM on December 7, 2007

"...sign up for PayPal..."
"I'd look at [...] PayPal."
"I'd say don't try. Use Paypal."

Here's the thing with using PayPal for something like this: use them only if you get their Virtual Terminal or other service designed for in-person processing of cards. Their normal service is intended only for other persons (not you) to be entering their own credit cards on their own PCs. Because of this, if PayPal detects multiple transactions for multiple cards all coming from the same IP address, they will be more than happy to freeze your account in the name of fraud protection. If you're lucky, they'll unfreeze it in 6 months or so. If you're less lucky, they'll refund everyone for you.
posted by CrayDrygu at 3:15 PM on December 7, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]