Last year Mastercard announced significant changes to its regulations on recurring payments worldwide, including recurring donations to not-for-profits. These changes were due to be enforced on September 22, 2022. However Mastercard have announced a six month delay in the enforcement of these changes for the not for profit sector, therefore the changes will now be in effect from 21 March 2023.
It is important to note that GiveNow is compliant with all these changes, therefore regular donations will continue to be processed without interruption for our organisations.
So what are the changes, and what do they mean? For any recurring donation made via Mastercard community organisations must be able to provide:
- email confirmation of the recurring donation, including the commitment made and instructions on how to cancel the donation
- an emailed receipt after every successful donation, as well as instructions on how to cancel the donation
- an online cancellation process, for example, a portal where donors can log in and cancel their donation commitment
- early notification of an upcoming donation, where recurring donations are more than six months apart (e.g. annual donations), a notification of the upcoming donation and instructions on how to cancel the donation must be sent seven to 30 days before the next transaction.
The changes are designed to reduce chargebacks and credit card fraud. Importantly, these are key elements that GiveNow has ALWAYS operated with. We believe that providing transparency to all regular donors, it maintains a respectful relationship between a donor and their community organisation.
Users of the GiveNow platform should be confident to not expect any change in regular donor activity as a consequence of these Mastercard regulations.