The best payment processor for CiviCRM
Here's a question I got from a client recently:
In your opinion which payment solution works best with CiviCRM?
PayPal
Square
Or what?
Of those two choices, only PayPal is supported by CiviCRM (there's no available payment processor for Square), but if you're just starting out, I'm going to recommend Stripe instead.
PayPal
PayPal works, is well known, and is fine for low-volume situations. But for an organization using CiviCRM, PayPal is full of headaches. For example, PayPal requires you to include their logo on all payment forms, insists on trying to get end-users to pay with their PayPal account instead of their credit card (which is confusing to people who are just trying to give you money), and is very hard to investigate when questions or issues come up (as they sometimes will, e.g. why was this payment canceled? etc.)
Stripe
Stripe, on the other hand, is very actively used in the CiviCRM community, offers clear documentation and clearly organized data, is completely transparent to the end user (users will never see a Stripe logo or get redirected away from your site to make a payment), and has a CiviCRM integration that is actively maintained and continually improved.
Stripe is what I use on my own site, and what most of my clients are using.
iATS
Here's another one that's fairly popular, and I know a few organizations that are using it happily with CiviCRM. They're also active supporters of the CiviCRM project, which is a boost for everyone, including organizations like yours who depend on it.
Others
If one of the above doesn't work for you, or if you have a specific payment processor you want to work with, you have a couple of options:
1. Take a look at the CiviCRM extensions directory. There may already be an extension that supports integration with the payment processor you want.
2. It is possible to hire a developer to create an extension for a given payment processor. This is not a small project to be undertaken lightly, but if you think that using that specific payment processor will save you $10K to $15K in the first year, then it might be worth it.
All the best,
A.