Payment Processing

Summary

AlumnIQ charges credit cards in real time for gifts made interactively by the donor. The first (or only) payment is due immediately for every pledge made via AlumnIQ. In just about all cases those go through without issue or abandonment.

For second+ payments on installment, recurring, and perpetual gifts, AlumnIQ runs a daily batch job to collect on those outstanding payments.

"Next" payment on a pledge

Each morning, AlumnIQ looks for any due or overdue giftpayment records associated with an open gift. We'll then run the charge and fire off a confirmation email to the donor.

If the gift is a perpetual one, we'll then automatically create the next payment (be it a month, quarter, or year out from today). Recurring and installment gifts have a fixed term and a predefined payment schedule viewable on the pledge record.

Failed/Overdue payments

AlumnIQ will try once per day for up to five consecutive days to capture a payment. The five day count starts from the date the pledge is created.

Each attempt will result in either success (and a gift confirmation email) or failure (and a failed payment notification).

The failed payment notification email goes to the donor with a link to update their payment information.

AlumnIQ will try again the next day (as part of the daily job) to capture the payment using the new payment information.

After five consecutive attempts the pledge is put in SUSPENDED state and will not be re-charged again unless/until new payment information is provided. Take note of this -- it does mean a "zombie" gift can come back to life weeks or months after the last payment attempt if a donor digs deep enough in their inbox and updates the card on file and there are pending payment records with an attempt count < 5. We determined it was better to recapture a lapsed donor than to expire and permanently suspend the pledge.

Curious how this played out for a given pledge?

Pull up the pledge record. We show both payment attempts and the payment schedule for comparison and sequential replay.