Church Center is web site and APP operated by Planning Center, a 13-year-old company dedicated to provide tools for Church and Ministries. We use it as online donation platform, because it has the lowest cost we found. We pay a low monthly fee in addition to the payment processing fee of Stripe. And according to their web site, they are used by over 50,000 churches and their co-founders worked at a church in full-time ministry.
Planning Center does not charge any fee for donors, they only charge small monthly fee to church. The processing fee we got through Planning Center is discounted rate from Stripe: 2.15% + $0.30/donation for credit and debit card donations, 0% + $0.25 per ACH bank transfer donation. If you are using credit card, we encourage you to consider increasing the contribution to cover the processing cost.
ACH is a Checking or Savings Account transaction. ACH stands for Automatic Clearing House, also known in the past as EFT or eCheck. User will have to enter in their bank account number and routing number in order to give via ACH.
Church Center has a mobile application that can be used to setup and track your online giving and tithing. Please search "Church Center" in the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. Once you download the app, you can search for "REM" Or "Rockville Evangelical Mission Church" either by name or zip code (20877).
General Fund - Administrative, operational costs, and other most needed area.
Missions Fund - For the sending and support of missionaries and missions agencies globally.
Building Fund - To support the construction and renovation of church facilities and the purchase of facilities.
Benevolent Fund - To provide assistance and financial aid to church members and others in the community experiencing financial difficulties and other traumas toward wholeness.
All online giving/tithing transactions are handled through Planning Center financial system outside of REM. A Church Center profile is required to view past transactions and schedule recurrent online giving.
By creating an account on the Church Center portal, you can log in and view all your past transactions. Creating an account is not required to give online, but it is highly recommended.
REM is using the Church Center web site and APP from Planning Center to as our online giving platform. Planning Center works with over 50,000 churches and has 13 years history.
All online giving transactions, from creating your profile, setting up your tithing, and providing your financial information are performed on Planning Center’s secure portal. No financial information or transaction information is collected by or stored in REM's website or servers.
Planning Center is a certified Level 1 PCI 3.2 Service Provider. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a mandated set of security requirements for protecting cardholder data. These standards were developed by the founding payment brands of the PCI Security Standards Council - American Express, Discover, JCB, MasterCard, and Visa - to facilitate the broad adoption of consistent data security measures on a global basis. Payment processing is processed by Stripes, one of the largest and most advanced provider in the world.
For more information, please see Planning Center's security page.
We highly recommend using unique passwords for each website and avoid re-using the same password for multiple websites. To help keep track of passwords, we recommend using a password manager. Please see this PC Magazine article for their recommended password managers.