Church Admin Plugin

Payment Gateway Setup

⭐ Premium

The Payment Gateway Setup screen connects Church Admin’s giving features to an online payment processor, enabling your congregation to give online through your website or the Our Church app. Church Admin supports two payment gateways — Stripe and PayPal.

Go to Church Admin → Giving → Payment Gateway Setup.

Choosing a gateway

Select either Stripe or PayPal using the radio buttons at the top of the screen. The relevant settings fields appear below depending on which you choose.

If you’re not sure which to use — Stripe generally offers a smoother donor experience with no PayPal account required for givers, while PayPal is more widely recognised. See the existing tutorials for more detail on each: Stripe payment gateway and PayPal not working?

Stripe settings

If you select Stripe, two fields appear:

  • Stripe public key — your Stripe publishable key, found in the Stripe dashboard under Developers → API keys. This key is safe to expose on the front end.
  • Stripe secret key — your Stripe secret key from the same location. Keep this confidential — it should never be shared publicly.

Stripe provides both test and live keys. Use the test keys while setting up and testing, then switch to the live keys when you are ready to accept real donations. See Stripe payment gateway for a full walkthrough of getting your keys.

PayPal settings

If you select PayPal, one field appears:

  • PayPal email address — the email address of the PayPal account that should receive donations. This must be a valid email address linked to an active PayPal business or personal account.

Currency settings

Two currency fields apply to both gateways:

  • Currency — select your currency from the dropdown. Church Admin supports a wide range of currencies including USD, GBP, EUR, AUD, CAD, and many others.
  • Currency symbol — enter the symbol to display on your giving form, for example $, £, or €. This is displayed alongside amounts on the front end.

Additional options

  • Show giving form in app — tick this to enable online giving through the Our Church app. Currently available for PayPal only.
  • UK Gift Aid form — tick this if your church is a registered UK charity and you want donors to be able to declare Gift Aid on their donation. This adds a Gift Aid declaration section to the giving form. See the Gift Aid tutorials for how to process and report Gift Aid claims.

Saving settings

Click Save at the bottom of the screen. A confirmation message appears and the gateway is active immediately. If any required fields are missing or invalid — such as a missing PayPal email or an unrecognised currency — an error message will explain what needs correcting before the settings can be saved.

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