The European Parliament’s second Payment Services Directive (PSD2), a piece of legislation regulating how European customers can make payments online, comes into effect on September 14, 2019. As a result of PSD2, many European online payments will require Strong Customer Authentication (SCA), a new set of requirements intended to reduce fraud and make payments more secure through two-factor authentication.
Our team is at work updating our NationBuilder integrated payment processing to be SCA compliant in advance of September 14th. In this post, we’ll explain how we’re approaching the project and answer top questions we have received from customers.
What happens on September 14th?
Any new one-time or recurring donations attempted on NationBuilder donation pages may be subject to additional authentication requirements. If a payment requires authentication but the user doesn’t provide it, the payment will fail. Recurring donations that were set up prior to September 14, 2019 are not expected to require authentication.
What types of donations will require authentication?
Any payment initiated by a cardholder whose bank is located in the European Economic Area (EEA) may require authentication, though we expect that any non-exempted payment in which the recipient’s bank is also located in the EEA will require authentication as well. Put another way – if you are a NationBuilder customer located in Europe, you should prepare for most transactions to require authentication. If you aren’t located in Europe but accept payments from donors in Europe, you should also make sure your pages are set up to collect proper authentication from those donors by signing up for NationBuilder’s integrated processor or our PayPal Express integration before September 14.
One exemption that we expect most European banks to honor is for fixed-amount recurring payments. For instance, if a donor set up a recurring payment of $10 before September 14, any subsequent payments of the same amount are unlikely to require authentication. Since our recurring donation integration doesn’t yet allow donors to change their gift amount, we expect most recurring donations to process successfully after authentication on the first payment. Once we add the ability for donors to manage their own gifts, we will also give them a way to re-authenticate as necessary.
How can I make my donations SCA compliant?
You can sign up for NationBuilder's integrated processor or our PayPal Express integration before September 14. NationBuilder’s integrated payment processing takes only a few minutes to set up and allows you to process donations using the Donation (v2) page type. PayPal has also stated that our hosted third-party integration with PayPal Express will be compliant in advance of September 14th.
Our other direct integrations—which allow the donor to complete checkout entirely on your NationBuilder website—will not prompt for authentication after September 14th and as a result, will not be SCA compliant. For any customers who will likely be affected by PSD2 and want to be SCA compliant, we recommend signing up for NationBuilder’s integrated payment processing.
If I want to sign up for NationBuilder’s integrated processing to set up SCA compliant donation forms, how can I do so?
NationBuilder's integrated processor is powered by Stripe, our payment service provider. NationBuilder's integrated payment processor Express option is now open to GBP users and Standard is open to EURO, AUD, and NZD users.
Once you have created an integrated payment processing account, you can use our donation page converter to upgrade your donation pages to the donation (v2) template, which allows one-time and recurring donations on the same page through our integrated payment processor.
Please note that European cards are defined by whether or not their issuing bank is located in the EEA, which still includes the UK as of this post. There are no gateway or setup fees to use integrated payment processing, and per-transaction rates are as follows:
EUR: 1.4% + €0.25 (European); 2.9% + €0.25 (non-European)
GBP: 1.4% + 20p (European); 2.9% + 20p (non-European)
AUD: 1.75% + 30¢ (domestic); 2.9% + 30¢ (international)
NZD: 2.9% + NZ$0.30
Nonprofit rates are not currently supported for beta countries.
