iATS Payments has served the nonprofit sector for longer than most payment providers have existed. If you run a charity, a membership body or a cause-driven site on WordPress, the practical question is not whether iATS can process a card, but which of your existing plugins it can plug into.
This page covers what iATS offers, who it genuinely suits, and every WordPress integration available, so you can go straight to the one that matches your setup.
Who iATS suits
iATS is built around donation processing rather than retail. That shapes everything: the reporting is organized around donors and campaigns rather than orders and SKUs, recurring giving is a first-class feature rather than a bolt-on, and the underwriting team is used to charities rather than treating them as an unusual case.
If you sell physical products at volume, a retail-focused gateway will fit better. If most of your income arrives as donations, memberships or recurring gifts, a nonprofit-focused processor removes a lot of friction you would otherwise absorb yourself.
What to sort out before you integrate
- Your account and credentials. Integration cannot be completed without them, and a half-configured gateway shows supporters a payment option that fails.
- Card and ACH. Decide whether you want bank transfers alongside cards. For recurring giving the difference matters: bank debits cost less per transaction and do not expire the way cards do.
- HTTPS across the site. Not just the donation page.
- Who receives the money. Confirm the settlement account and timing before your first campaign, not during it.
Every iATS integration for WordPress
Pick the one matching the plugin you already use. Each guide covers credentials, configuration, testing and going live.
| If you use | Setup guide | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| GiveWP | iATS for GiveWP | Donations and recurring giving. The natural fit. |
| WooCommerce | iATS for WooCommerce | Shops, memberships and ticketing. |
| Gravity Forms | iATS for Gravity Forms | Custom forms with conditional amounts. |
| Ninja Forms | iATS for Ninja Forms | Simple pledge and signup forms. |
| Contact Form 7 | iATS for Contact Form 7 | Lightweight forms on an existing site. |
| Easy Digital Downloads | iATS for Easy Digital Downloads | Digital products, resources and paid reports. |
Which integration should you choose?
Choose by the plugin already running your money, not by preference. If donations arrive through GiveWP today, the GiveWP integration keeps donor records where your team already looks. Adding a second system to run payments through a different plugin creates reconciliation work every month.
The exception is a site outgrowing a general form plugin. Collecting donations through Contact Form 7 works, but you get no donor records, no recurring management and no campaign reporting. If donations are becoming central, moving to GiveWP first and integrating iATS there is the better sequence.
Recurring giving
Recurring donations are where nonprofit payment setups are won or lost. Two practical points:
First, card expiry is the largest single cause of lapsed recurring gifts. A donor who set up a monthly gift three years ago has almost certainly been reissued a card. Offering bank debit alongside cards avoids the problem entirely for the supporters who choose it.
Second, a failed recurring payment is a retention problem, not a billing problem. A supporter whose gift silently fails is usually lost. Make sure someone receives and acts on failure notifications.
Frequently asked questions
Do supporters leave our site to donate?
No. These integrations keep the payment step on your own site, which matters more for donations than for retail. A handoff to an unfamiliar page mid-gift is a well-documented cause of abandonment, and trust is the whole transaction for a charity.
Can we accept both cards and bank payments?
Yes, and for recurring giving it is worth doing. Bank debits cost less and do not expire. Offer both and let supporters choose.
What about donor data and compliance?
Using a gateway integration keeps card numbers off your servers, which removes the largest part of your PCI scope. You remain responsible for the rest: HTTPS, current plugins, strong admin passwords and restraint about who holds an admin account.
Can we run more than one payment method?
Yes. Running a second provider alongside iATS means an outage or account issue does not stop donations. For an organization dependent on a single annual campaign, that redundancy is worth the extra setup.
Costs, and what actually drives them
Headline transaction rates get most of the attention and explain less of the total cost than people expect. Three other things usually matter more.
Payment mix. Bank debit is materially cheaper per transaction than card. An organization that moves a meaningful share of its recurring supporters onto bank payments changes its cost base far more than one that negotiates a few basis points off its card rate.
Failure rate. Every failed recurring payment costs the gift and often the supporter. Reducing failures is worth more than reducing fees, and it is more within your control.
Staff time. A setup that forces manual reconciliation each month has a real cost that never appears on a processor statement. Integrations that write straight into your donor records pay for themselves in hours saved.
Migrating from another provider
Moving one-off donations is straightforward: switch the gateway and carry on. Recurring gifts are the hard part, because an existing mandate or stored card sits with your old processor and generally cannot simply be pointed somewhere new.
Plan for one of two routes. Some providers will support a compliant transfer of stored payment credentials between processors, which preserves the schedules. Where that is not available, existing supporters have to re-authorize, and you should expect to lose a proportion of them. Run the old and new setups in parallel during the transition rather than switching in one step, and never let a campaign deadline force the cutover date.
A note on accessibility
Donation forms are used by a broader range of people than most e-commerce checkouts, including older supporters and people using assistive technology. Keep labels visible rather than relying on placeholder text, make error messages specific about which field failed, and check the form works by keyboard alone. This is the single most overlooked cause of abandoned gifts on charity sites.
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