Connecting Stripe

Event fees, event add-ons and the store are paid into your church’s own Stripe account. You connect it once, in Settings, and Stripe asks for your church’s details and bank account on its own pages.

How to connect

1. In the staff dashboard, open Settings and find Payments. The badge reads Not set up.
2. Choose Set up payments with Stripe. HoW opens a new Stripe account for your church and takes you to Stripe’s pages.
3. Complete Stripe’s form. Stripe asks for what it needs to pay your church: details about the church, a person who represents it, and the bank account payouts go to. Stripe may first ask you to prove you are a person, so this is done by hand.
4. When you finish, Stripe brings you back to Settings, and the card checks where your account stands.
5. You are done when the badge reads Ready to take payments.

If you stop half-way, come back to Settings and choose Continue set-up in Stripe.

What the card tells you

• Not set up: nothing started yet.
• Set-up in progress: you started Stripe’s form but have not finished. “Finish the steps on Stripe’s pages to start taking payments.” Choose Continue set-up in Stripe.
• Stripe is reviewing your details: “Nothing to do: Stripe usually finishes in a few minutes, sometimes a day or two. This updates on its own.”
• Stripe needs more information: “Stripe needs a little more from you before payments can start.” Choose Continue set-up in Stripe.
• Payments paused by Stripe: “Stripe has paused this account.” Use Open the Stripe Dashboard to see why and what Stripe needs.
• Ready to take payments: members can pay.

Under the badge the card shows your Stripe account number and whether it is taking payments and paying out. Check status asks Stripe again at any time; the card also updates on its own when Stripe tells HoW something changed.

Good to know

• The account is your church’s. Your church is the seller and owns the Stripe account, with its own Stripe Dashboard and its own relationship with Stripe. Payouts go straight from Stripe to your church’s bank account. DCX Logic never holds the money.
• DCX Logic takes no cut of what members pay. Stripe charges its own processing fees on your church’s account.
• One account for everything. Event fees, add-ons and the store all go into the same Stripe account.
• A new account. HoW opens a new Stripe account for your church; it cannot be linked to a Stripe account your church already has.
• Payout timing, statements, disputes and Stripe Tax are managed in your Stripe Dashboard, not in HoW.
• Until the badge reads Ready to take payments, members who try to pay read “this church is not set up to take payments yet” and nothing is charged. Free events still work.
• Who can do it. Only the church’s owner. Settings is not open to administrators or other staff.

If something isn’t right

• The badge still reads Set-up in progress after Stripe’s form. Choose Check status. Straight after the form Stripe often needs a minute or two before it says the account is ready.
• Payments are not switched on where you are signed in (the card says “Stripe is not configured for this environment”). Contact DCX Logic support.
• HoW doesn’t know your dashboard’s web address to bring you back to (the card says “the church has no active dashboard host”). Contact DCX Logic support.
• A red message on the card ending “Reference E-…”: something went wrong on HoW’s side. Send the reference to DCX Logic support; it tells them exactly what happened.
• Payments paused by Stripe. Only Stripe can lift a pause. Open your Stripe Dashboard, or contact Stripe’s support.

What DCX Logic support can do

Support can see where your Stripe account stands, explain what each status means, and fix problems on HoW’s side, such as the two messages above. Stripe’s form asks for the church’s legal details and a representative’s identity, so someone from your church completes it. Questions about verification, payouts and paused accounts are answered by Stripe.

Coming from Planning Center

Planning Center Payments also runs on Stripe and pays into your church’s bank account. It creates a new Stripe account that Planning Center manages for you (an existing Stripe account cannot be used), and only an organization administrator can set it up and become its owner. HoW is much the same: it opens a new Stripe account for your church, the church’s owner sets it up from Settings, and Stripe asks for the church’s legal details, a representative and a bank account. The difference is that HoW’s is a full Stripe account your church owns, with its own Stripe Dashboard.