Credit and Debit card payment is activated and operational on our website.
After the registration process by the Swiss Authorities has completed and we obtained our official identification number, every precondition has been given to activate this feature which allows the rest of the world to support our efforts in favour of protecting biodiversity.
At the top menu there is a page YOUR IMPACT > DONATE where bank card transfers can be initiated.
There is no lower or upper limit for the transfer, for which any VISA, MATER CARD, AmEx card or PayPal account is accepted.
Should you wish to donate by using other systems currently not available, please drop an email to us.
The bank card transfer functionality is provided and processed by secure 3rd party applications and interfaces. We, The Biodiversity Alliance do not access, process or store any information required for the identification and validation process.
Well done Janos, I’ll try it at the weekend and let you know my experience, cheers Mike 🙂
I tried it to the point of having to fill in the details and it appears to work Janos.
However, I found that only one amount is mentioned. Should we not do as is commonly practiced, that is boxes for amounts, starting let us say with USD 5.00, graduating up to USD 100.00, with a last box where the donor puts in any amount over USD 100.00?
Good idea Ven. I will look around to see if there are any free plugins available offering this possibility for customization.
I’ve made some changes, there are options available now. Appearance is not perfect, will be changed later on.
Great Janos. I have tested the initial steps and looks fine.
One more thing Janos. I did not see a Branch Code for the Account No. I assume there is none.
Otherwise we are fine on this one, and as you said, we shall fine tune when the necessity arises.
Ven
Thanks Ven. No, we do not have branch code, as we have only one account, in CHF.
Thanks Janos and Ven, Mike 🙂
Thanks Janos and Mike. We are on the move!!!
Hi Janos, I assume these amounts are US$. What happens with exchange rate costs? Just curious. Who pays: the donor or BA? Thanks for including the e-banking transfer route too. Mike 🙂
Yes Mike, it is currently US$. I will make it 100% clear on the Donation page. If you click on the Transfer button, the currency (US$) can be seen on the page you are being transferred to, before providing your payment/card details.
Now I need to have a look at if and how can I change the currency of donation to Euro. The 3rd party module working behind the scenes and executing the transfer is owned and operated by a company called Stripe, and they would charge us 2% of the donated amount if conversion has to be made. From USD to CHF it will always be the case.
On Friday our bank, PostFinance, told me that for an association they do not open account in USD. Available choices are CHF our EUR. If I open an account in EUR, and I set the currency to EUR as well, we can get rid of the conversion fee. On the other hand, if our donor transfers a currency other than EUR, he or she will be charged by his or her bank with the conversion costs, or it will be deducted on the donor’s side before the transfer.
The cost of the EUR account for us is 60 CHF/year. The same cost as for the CHF account. So the whole story makes sense only if we expect to receive more than 3000 CHF per year, which momentarily seems to be utopistic. However if I look at the amounts collected for various incredible purposes on Indiegogo, 3000 CHF seems to be very low. So it is an optimization problem for the period when we will have a project initiative in our pocket and we can tell the world why and for what do we need money.
Ok Janos, thanks for that. I thought as much. I was going to make a PayPal donation, then thought ha! I get charged a small fee by my British bank on non-Sterling transactions. But I didn’t know if I, or BA, would get another fee going from US$ to CHF.
E-banking is easy because both my British & Cook’s accounts ask exactly what currency I wish to use; and who pays the charges: me, the receiver, or half & half .
Euro a/c has merits, but we can leave it for now.
I’ll wait for your next feedback, Mike 🙂
The USD has become the Universal money language, with the EURO following. I doubt if anyone can get away with conversion/bank charges, and anybody prepared to donate will have, and usually does accept that there will be some charges.
Looking at the majority of other organisations, their donation/contribution currency is invariably in USD. So let us not deviate.
I think it would probably be better to have a EURO, the second universal currency, than a CHF account Janos.
Two other methods of payment that we have left out are Western Union and MoneyGram. We may need to think about these also.
Ven
Yes Western Union is most used across Pacific too