Help Desk
By James Byers, guest Webmaster
Online Donations
I'm working with an organization that's trying to set up an online donation form. It already has a credit card system for processing donations sent by mail, so it would rather not have to set up another one for processing online transactions. Ideally, the organization would like to have a secure system via the Web that sends it all of the submitted donation information and credit card numbers. It would then enter this information into its machine, and send a printed confirmation to each donor. What would be the cheapest (and easiest) way to handle these transactions securely?
—Charles
While many small organizations set up credit card processing systems on their Web sites, there are several risks to this approach. It's often difficult to manage the many details of maintaining and securing an e-commerce site, especially in a small organization whose core competencies lie elsewhere.
Even if you contract with a hosting provider to outsource the server administration, keeping a secure site running requires a diligent manager to watch the server's logs, tightly control access to credit card information, and stay on the lookout for security issues with your form handling scripts.
Although the organization already has credit card processing systems in-house, you should consider using a third-party payment system, such as PayPal or the
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