Supporting iATS Payments’ Open Source Contributions

The Release of Its PHP Wrapper Library

This week, in conjunction with iATS Payments, ThinkShout is excited to announce the release of the iATS Payments PHP library, a comprehensive wrapper around iATS web services exposing customer, processing, and reporting functionality in an easy to consume PHP library. Any PHP based system, including Drupal, Wordpress, and Magento, can now easily integrate the processing of online payments and donations via iATS Payments. The library includes a test suite built using PHPUnit with complete code coverage so developers can feel confident in the code they’re using and a full set of documentation generated by phpDocumentor.

ThinkShout worked closely with the iATS team to define the requirements for the library before jumping in to write the code, which we reviewed together every step of the way. The end result of the collaboration is a win for everyone involved, iATS Payments, ThinkShout, and, most importantly, the nonprofit community.

The Growing Importance of Online Giving Tools

By many reports, the nonprofit sector saw double digit growth in online giving in 2013. As nonprofits continue to invest in online outreach and advocacy, it could not be more important that these organizations leverage easy-to-use donation forms and other online fundraising tools that integrate tightly with their donor databases.

Seamless donation forms (i.e., forms that are built into an organization’s website) provide a better user experience for potential supporters. They also convey significantly more credibility and professionalism to donors that might not be familiar with the online giving experience.

Once an online donation has been received, it is critical that these financial transactions are captured within an organization’s donor database (or CRM). “Best of breed” online giving solutions integrate tightly with CRMs to provide additional donation processing features from directly inside of the CRM user interface.

Why iATS Is Our Recommended Service for Nonprofit Payment Processing

At ThinkShout, we are constantly evaluating new payment processing services that can enhance the online giving features that we develop for our clients. About a year and a half ago, we were introduced to the good folks at iATS Payments. iATS has quickly become our payment processing service of choice for the nonprofit sector.

In addition to its social mission and great customer support, iATS provides a suite of world-class payment processing tools, including one of the leading integrations with Salesforce and a robust API. We have leveraged these features for a number of our clients to build enterprise-grade e-commerce and paid event management solutions that support real-time integration between Drupal and Salesforce.

Next Steps: Deeper Integration Between iATS and Drupal Commerce

Now that we have a solid foundation, ThinkShout will work closely with iATS Payments and the Drupal community to rewrite the Drupal Commerce iATS module to make it even easier to integrate payment processing via iATS into Drupal. ThinkShout will leverage its integration experience with MailChimp and Salesforce to ensure the module is flexible enough to serve a wide variety of customized use cases while still being a powerful “out of the box” tool for site administrators. Look for a release over the next month.

Meet the iATS Payments and ThinkShout Teams at the NTC

ThinkShout and iATS Payments will be at the Nonprofit Technology Conference in Washington, D.C. from March 13th to 15th and we encourage developers and nonprofits alike to stop by our booths to learn more about the PHP wrapper and the other services offered by iATS. Stephen Bestbier of iATS Payments and Lev Tsypin of ThinkShout will be on site at NTC and look forward to discussing many facets of iATS Payments’ integrations for nonprofits. Visit iATS Payments at booth #427 and ThinkShout at booth #231 to learn more.

For more information about iATS Payments, visit their website at www.iatspayments.com.