Cards

To protect your organization from fraudulent donations, our AI system may hold some card transactions — including those made with Apple Pay and Google Pay — for up to 3 days before funds are transferred to your account. If a transaction is canceled during this time — either automatically by our anti-fraud system or manually by you — your organization won't be charged any processing fees.

When a supporter completes a donation, their card is authorized and the funds are held but not yet charged. The donation appears with a Succeeded status immediately, and the supporter receives their receipt.

Here's what happens next:

• After 3 days, the held funds are automatically captured and transferred to your organization.
• If a refund is issued during the hold period, the funds are released back to the supporter's available balance and no processing fees are charged. This applies whether you issue the refund, the supporter requests it, or our anti-fraud system triggers it automatically.

Your supporters see no difference — they get confirmation and a receipt right away. In your Dashboard, the donation appears successful and you can process it normally, including issuing refunds if needed.

When you view a donation with held funds in your Dashboard, you'll see a notice indicating when the funds will be captured.

The hold notice shows when funds will be captured.

Control this setting in Settings > Payment methods > Credit cards. If your account was created before December 16, 2025, delayed processing is turned off by default. If it was created on or after that date, it’s turned on by default.

Changing this setting only affects new donations. Any donations with funds currently on hold will complete their normal 3-day processing cycle.

Saved payment method details can continue to work even if the physical card has been replaced by the issuing bank. Stripe works with card networks and automatically attempts to update saved card details whenever a supporter receives a new card (for example, replacing an expired card or one that was reported lost or stolen). This allows your supporters to continue their recurring giving without interruption and reduces the need for you to collect new card details whenever a card is replaced.

Because Stripe charges 0.25 USD for each card update, Fundraise Up applies these automatic card updates to recurring plans only. This means that recurring plans can remain unaffected by expired cards, but your organization won’t pay for unnecessary storage of card details in Stripe for one-time donations.

When a card is used to make a donation, the payment token is securely stored and made available for use in the Virtual Terminal. This way, if a supporter requests to make a donation in person or over the phone, you can easily process it using the supporter’s saved card payment method.

Sometimes, a supporter creates a recurring plan using a card-based payment method, but later wishes to update the recurring plan to a different payment method. Supporters can make this change without needing to request it from your organization by accessing their Donor Portal. Learn more →