A donor's saved payment methods, their cards and bank accounts, are what power one-time and recurring gifts. Donors manage their payment methods in their donor portal, staff can send a secure link, and eligible staff can also enter payment details on the donor's behalf. Card and bank details are always entered securely and stored by our payment provider, never kept in plain form.
Add a credit/debit card or a bank account (ACH). When you click Create Payment Method from the donor's record, you'll choose how the details get entered:
• Enter on behalf of donor: staff type the card or bank details directly into a secure form during the call or visit. The form tokenizes the details with the payment provider immediately, CoolFocus never sees or stores the raw card or account number. This option only appears when CoolPay is set up for your organization and you have permission to update donor records, including organizations approved for CoolPay before business-level linking was added. If it isn't available, you'll see a message explaining why (for example, CoolPay isn't fully configured, or you don't have the required permission), and you can still use the secure link option below.
• Send secure link: send a one-time link by email or text so the donor adds their own card or bank details in the donor portal.
Either way, the details are tokenized by the payment provider. A newly added method becomes the donor's default unless you choose to apply it only to specific recurring gifts.
If the payment provider can't validate what was entered, staff see a message asking them to check the details and try again, rather than the provider's raw error text.
When adding a method on behalf of a donor, you can also choose whether it should:
• Become the primary method only, leaving existing recurring gifts on their current payment methods.
• Become primary and apply to specific recurring contributions you select.
• Become primary and apply to all of the donor's active recurring contributions.
If a recurring gift you move to the new method had been paused for a payment problem, it automatically resumes.
Adding a payment method on behalf of a donor is recorded in the security log so there's a record of who entered it and when.
The default method is used for future gifts unless another is chosen. Set whichever method the donor prefers as default.
Delete a method the donor no longer uses. If that method is attached to one or more active recurring gifts, CoolFocus automatically moves those gifts to another usable payment method on the account before deleting it, so you usually don't need to move the gift yourself first:
• CoolFocus prefers the donor's default payment method as the replacement. If there's no default, it uses the most recently added method that can be charged.
• If a recurring gift had been paused because of a payment problem, moving it to a working payment method automatically resumes it.
• If there's no other usable payment method on the account (for example, the only alternative has no card/bank details on file), the delete is blocked and you'll see a message asking the donor to add another payment method first.
Cards expire and sometimes get declined. There are a few ways to fix it:
• The donor adds a new card themselves in the donor portal and sets it as default.
• Staff enter the new card or bank details directly, using the Enter on behalf of donor option described above, if it's available for your organization.
• Staff send a Payment Method Update link by email or text. The donor clicks it and enters a new card on a secure page, you never handle the card number. The link is single-use and expires after about 30 days.
Sending that link by text requires the donor to already have an opted-in texting consent on file. If they don't, send the link by email instead, or have the donor add or update a payment method themselves from the donor portal.
Updating the method also lets any recurring gift that was paused for a payment problem pick back up.
• Managing a Recurring Gift
• Fixing Failed & Missed Payments
• Understanding ACH Risks in CoolPay
