Bacs Direct Debit

This article will take you through the steps needed to enable Bacs in Fundraise Up, including the steps you need to take in Stripe to ensure that transactions are processed and handled correctly. It will also give you an insight into the donor experience when giving via Bacs in your Checkout form.

Overview

Please note that Bacs only supports recurring donations, so it won’t appear as a payment option for one-time donations. In the Virtual Terminal, Bacs will only appear as an available payment method if the Allow direct debits to be set up in the Virtual Terminal checkbox is checked in the Virtual Terminal section of your Dashboard settings. Learn more →

Processing fees

Payment processor fees on Bacs donations are 1%, starting at 0.20 GBP and capped at 2 GBP.

Step 1: Enable and configure Bacs in Stripe

Enabling Bacs in Stripe

1. Go to your Stripe dashboard.
2. Click the gear icon in the top-right corner of the screen and click Settings.
3. In the Payments section, select Payment methods.
4. Locate Bacs Direct Debit and click Turn on.

Configuring Bacs in Stripe

Once you've enabled Bacs Direct Debit in your Stripe account, you need to make some additional changes for it to work effectively with Fundraise Up. For each Bacs donation, Stripe will send a series of emails to assist with account verification and payment confirmation. These emails are unnecessary, as Fundraise Up sends the same information with the added benefit of customization and a consolidated email log on the donation record. Additionally, “Stripe” will be shown by default on your supporter’s bank statements and within the Fundraise Up Checkout form, so you’ll want to update this too. This is referred to as a Business Display Name.

To set a custom Business Display Name for supporters' bank statements and disable redundant emails sent by Stripe, you must upgrade your Bacs Direct Debit payment method. The cost for setting a custom Business Display Name is 50 GBP per month.

Follow these instructions to upgrade your Bacs Direct Debit payment method in order to disable Stripe emails and to create a custom Business Display Name.

1. Go to Payment Methods in your Stripe account settings.
2. Find and click Bacs Direct Debit. Click Configure as shown on the screenshot below.
   

3. Then, select the Upgrade option.
4. Next, you'll be asked to provide a Business Display Name. This is what supporters will see on their bank statements next to their donation. Once set, this name cannot be changed later. As a rule, it’s best to use the name of your organization. The new name will be displayed 3–5 business days after the first live Bacs payment. Any payments processed during this 3–5 business day period will still show "Stripe" on the supporter’s bank statement. 

1. Now that you've updated your Business Display Name, it's now time to disable Stripe's redundant Bacs emails. Do this step only after the previous step is completed. Stripe will allow you to disable the redundant emails only after you're able to prove that the emails you're replacing them with are in compliance with Bacs regulations. To prove compliance and have Stripe disable their Bacs debit emails, you must do the following:
   1. Make a test donation via Bacs (using Stripe's test numbers) using the Fundraise Up Checkout form.
   2. Take a screenshot of the resulting "Bank mandate" email, including the section below the fold which shows the bank mandate details and Direct Debit guarantee text.
   3. Then, contact Stripe Support and send the message below with the screenshot you took in the previous step:

   My connected platform, Fundraise Up, sends the Bacs agreement mandate and guarantee for me, so I want to disable it on my Stripe account. Please see the attached image for verification that the Bacs agreement email being sent by Fundraise Up is compliant.

   

   Once Stripe confirms compliance, they will add a toggle to your Stripe's email settings that will allow you to toggle off Bacs mandate and debit initiation emails.

Failure to disable the Stripe Bacs email set will result in the supporter receiving two sets of emails with differing content.

Step 2: Enable Bacs in Fundraise Up

Once your Fundraise Up account is connected to a UK Stripe account, you can enable Bacs by following these steps.

1. Go to the Fundraise Up Dashboard.
2. Click your name in the top-right corner, and choose Settings from the dropdown menu.
3. Click Payment Methods in the left hand menu.
4. Click on for Bacs (UK Direct Debit).
5. Confirm that you've done the following, as instructed on the setup screen and as covered above:
   • disabled Stripe's default Bacs emails
   • enabled Bacs within Stripe
   • set your Business Display Name in Stripe.
6. Click the Enable Bacs button. Supporters with UK bank accounts will now be able to donate directly from those bank accounts in your Fundraise Up Checkout forms.

Step 3: Review how supporters pay with Bacs

When a supporter gets to the Payment Options screen of the Checkout form, as long as their donation is a recurring donation of 2 GBP or higher (which most recurring donations will be, as the default minimum amount is 5 GBP), they'll be provided a Direct Debit button with the Bacs logo. See the following example screenshots from our Checkout modal.

If they click the Direct Debit button, they'll be taken to a screen where they can provide their sort code, account number, account holder name, and confirm their understanding of how the flow is managed.

Regardless of whether the campaign they are donating through has Ask for mailing address enabled, their mailing address will be required during Checkout, as a complete address is required in order to confirm their Bacs details.

Once the supporter has completed all required steps in the Checkout form, they will see a payment confirmation screen showing their Direct Debit details and an explanation of the Guarantee.

Bacs in the Virtual Terminal

Bacs will appear as a payment option in the Virtual Terminal provided both the following criteria are met:

• A campaign is selected in which the supporter’s mailing address is either requested or required
• The supporter is making a recurring donation of 2 GBP or more

As in the Checkout form, if the supporter chooses Bacs as their payment option they will need to provide a mailing address, even if it is only requested and not required in your chosen campaign. The supporter will need to provide their account number and sort code.

Step 4: Customize confirmation and verification emails

When supporters make Bacs donations, they will receive emails from Fundraise Up. These emails can be managed and customized from your Fundraise Up account. They can be adjusted both centrally from the Emails section of your Dashboard Settings, and on a per-campaign basis using the controls in each campaign's Emails tab.

Supporters giving via Bacs will always receive the "Bank Mandate" email containing the details of their mandate, as an email containing this information is required by regulators. It also includes legal text (sourced from Stripe) below their agreement, outlining the supporter’s entitlements in regards to their Bacs payment. The mandate details are added below the content configured in the Bank Mandate email settings tab.

The "Donation in progress" email is separate and can be turned off if desired. To configure and view this text, navigate to the Email Templates page of Settings and click Donation in progress in the left-hand menu.

Supporters will receive the applicable receipt email templates only when their donation is marked successful in Fundraise Up.

Processing and email delivery times

Stripe only knows if a Bacs donation installment succeeds if they don't receive a fail notice from the bank — they don't receive a success notice. So, Stripe can only mark a Bacs donation as successful once the possible window for it failing has elapsed. Once that window is passed without a fail, Stripe marks it successful and then lets Fundraise Up know to mark it successful, which can also take a little time.

As such, for new donations and first installments of new recurring plans, receiving the "Receipt" email can take up to eight business days, as the initial charge can only be run two days after authorization, and then a six business day gap where the donation can either succeed or fail.

For subsequent installments of recurring plans, receiving the "Recurring installment receipt" email can take up to 5 business days, because the initial authorization is already complete.

If, at any point in time, the supporter has the bank remove their Direct Debit permission associated with a recurring plan, Stripe will be notified within a few days and will in turn notify Fundraise Up, after which the plan will then be marked as failed (as the associated payment method has been revoked). At that time, the supporter will receive the "Plan failed" email (if the email is enabled), notifying them that their recurring donation can no longer be processed and that they can reactivate their donation by providing new payment information if desired.