Payments for Permanent Organisations

The meeting ends at nine. You think about the accounts on the drive home. Not because anything is wrong, particularly, but because the responsibility sits with you now. You volunteered for this, or perhaps you were the only one willing, and the organisation existed before you arrived and will exist after you move on. The subscriptions have been collected this way for longer than you have been a member. The reserves were built by treasurers whose names you may not know.

There is a particular weight to holding something in trust. Not ownership, because you do not own this. Not employment, because nobody pays you for these hours. Something else entirely. The accounts are yours to prepare, but the money belongs to members who joined before you did and members who have not yet found you. The committee looks to you for clarity on matters you are still learning. The auditor, when they come, will assess work you inherited as much as work you produced. You carry not just the current year but the accumulated practices of everyone who held this role before you.

You may hold this role for two years or twenty. You do not know yet. What you know is that you will not hold it forever, and that the organisation will need to continue when you stop. The systems you maintain, the providers you choose, the documentation you create or fail to create: all of it will pass to someone else eventually. That eventual handover, whether it comes next year or in fifteen years, shapes every decision you make now.

You inherited this from someone. Perhaps they explained things well, spent an evening walking you through the systems, introduced you to the bank manager. Perhaps they handed over a folder and wished you luck. Either way, you now carry what they carried: the quiet awareness that a mistake here is not just a mistake. It becomes a story. It becomes the year the accounts were wrong, the event where the card machine failed, the fee increase nobody noticed until the AGM. Your committee trusts you to get this right. They trust you to manage systems you did not choose, to work with providers you did not select, to maintain relationships you did not establish. That trust, and the weight of it, is the heaviest thing in the folder.

Every treasurer walks into something already in progress. There is a folder, or a drawer, or a shared drive that was last organised some time ago. The login credentials are written in someone else's handwriting. The card terminal works, you are fairly certain, though you could not say precisely what it costs or when the contract renews. The bank knows your predecessor's voice better than yours.

This is not chaos. It is simply not yours, yet. The systems function. The payments process. The members receive their receipts. But the logic behind it all, the reasoning that led to these particular choices, exists only partially in documentation and partially in the memory of people who have moved on. You are responsible for something you did not design, accountable for decisions you did not make.

Your predecessor may have served three years or thirty. It does not matter. What matters is what transferred when they left, and what was lost. The length of service creates its own risks: a treasurer who serves two years may not understand the systems deeply enough to explain them; a treasurer who serves twenty years may understand them so deeply that no one else does. Both create succession problems. Different problems, but problems. The short-serving treasurer leaves behind shallow understanding. The long-serving treasurer leaves behind a void where institutional knowledge used to be.

What follows is meant to make that inheritance visible. Not to judge what you walked into, but to help you see it clearly.

The desk is what you inherit. But the desk does not tell you how prepared you are to change what sits on it, nor how much of your predecessor's reasoning you actually received. The questions below are not a test. They are a way of making visible what is often left unspoken.

The comparison websites exist. They compare features and fees, and they do it thoroughly. What they don't compare is fit. A payment system that works brilliantly for a pop-up coffee shop may be entirely wrong for a century-old professional association, and the reverse is equally true. The provider that optimises for speed of setup may be poorly suited to an organisation that values stability above all else.

The decision looks like a feature comparison. Price per transaction. Settlement times. Contract length. These are the numbers that fill the comparison tables, and they matter. But they are not what treasurers actually optimise for when they choose payment infrastructure for permanent organisations.

The decision is actually about four things that no comparison chart measures. Four dimensions that determine whether a choice will serve the organisation well, not just during your tenure, but across the decades.

What follows is a framework for thinking about what you are actually choosing. Each quadrant represents a different kind of consideration. Click or tap any quadrant to explore what it means and what threatens it. You may find that your organisation weights these differently from others. That is as it should be.

Every organisation weights these four dimensions differently. A newer organisation building its reputation may care most about legitimacy. An organisation that has survived a difficult handover may prioritise continuity above all else. An organisation that has been embarrassed by a past decision may value defensibility most highly.

The ranking exercise below captures how your organisation weights these considerations. This will shape the guidance that follows, highlighting providers and approaches that align with what matters most to you.

Some considerations don't appear on feature comparison charts. They sit beneath the surface of every payment decision, rarely named but always present. Your hesitation about these things is not a weakness. It is prudence. What follows names five of the most common concerns that treasurers carry but seldom voice.

The Terminology Problem

"Interchange fees, scheme assessments, PCI compliance." The vocabulary is opaque, and this is not accidental. The payments industry developed its language for professionals who negotiate these terms daily. Interchange plus pricing, blended rates, acquirer margins, scheme fees: each term has a specific meaning that affects your costs, but few treasurers will need to master them, however long they serve.

What matters is simpler: your total cost per transaction, including all fees, expressed as a single percentage. Any provider should be able to give you this. If they can't, or won't, that tells you something. The technical terms do matter if you're negotiating bespoke rates at higher volumes. But for most associations, the question is whether you can understand your statement, not whether you can challenge the interchange categorisation.

The Successor Problem

This is the consideration that separates institutional decisions from personal ones. Every treasurer leaves eventually. Some leave after eighteen months; some leave after eighteen years. The circumstances vary: relocation, retirement, burnout, bereavement, or simply the feeling that it's someone else's turn. What doesn't vary is the fact of departure.

A choice that's clever but complex might serve you brilliantly for a decade and strand your successor in their first month. A long-serving treasurer accumulates understanding that never gets written down: why this provider was chosen, what that setting does, which support contact actually helps. The longer the tenure, the deeper the institutional knowledge, and the greater the loss when it leaves.

The right question isn't "what's best for me?" but "what's best that will still be manageable for someone with none of my context?" Your successor won't have attended the sales meeting. Won't remember the provider comparison you did. Won't know which features you tried and abandoned, or why.

Contract length matters less than comprehensibility. An eighteen-month contract renewed eight times by a long-serving treasurer creates no problem. The same contract, inherited mid-term by a bewildered successor with no documentation, creates crisis. The contract isn't the risk. The handover is the risk.

The Statement Problem

The payment moment is when the organisation's identity becomes tangible. A statement that reads "LLOYDS CARDNET" sends a different signal than "SQ *VILLAGE HALL" or "STRIPE PAYMENTS UK." Neither is wrong, but one may fit your organisation better than the other.

For some associations, newer, more informal, with a membership comfortable with technology, a statement showing Square or Stripe is perfectly appropriate. For others, long-established, traditional membership, older demographic, a bank-backed descriptor carries weight. This isn't about snobbery. It's about recognition. When members see the charge, do they immediately know what it is? Does it look like something their organisation would do?

The Invisibility Problem

Payment infrastructure should be invisible when working. The treasurer's goal isn't optimisation. It is absence of problems. A slightly more expensive system that never fails is worth more than a cheaper one that requires attention.

The cost of "an issue" isn't just the financial impact. It's the committee time, the member complaints, the explanation you'll need to give, the question of whether you made a mistake. A system that runs quietly, month after month, year after year, is doing its job. This is why support hours matter more than most comparisons suggest. If something goes wrong on a Saturday morning before your annual event, what happens? Some providers offer weekend support. Some don't. The price difference is often negligible compared to the risk.

The Reputation Problem

This is the unspoken weight of the role. A procurement decision in a business is a line item. A procurement decision in a volunteer organisation is personal. The stakes feel higher because they are, reputationally, if not always financially.

The member who lost their payment details to a breach. The event where the card machine didn't work. The fee increase nobody noticed until the AGM. These become stories that outlast the treasurer who was responsible. This isn't irrational caution. It's institutional memory working as intended. The organisations that survive are the ones where people care about getting it right. Your careful consideration is a feature, not a weakness.

The comparison sites compare features and fees, and they do it well enough. What they don't compare is fit. A provider that's perfect for a pop-up coffee shop may be wrong for a century-old professional association. Understanding why requires understanding what different providers actually optimise for, and what trade-offs each category involves.

The Categories of Provider

The UK payment market divides broadly into six categories, each serving different needs and optimising for different things. Before examining individual providers, it helps to understand what each category offers and where it falls short.

Bank-backed traditional providers (Lloyds Cardnet, Barclaycard) offer the legitimacy of established banking relationships and custom pricing at higher volumes. They require contracts, typically twelve to thirty-six months, which provides stability and predictability for organisations with settled leadership. Their standard settlement is slower than newer alternatives, but the relationship is institutional: the bank knows the organisation, not just the current treasurer. They are well-suited to established organisations who value stability and plan to maintain the relationship across multiple committee generations.

Bank-backed challenger providers (Tyl by NatWest) attempt to combine bank legitimacy with fintech simplicity. They offer transparent pricing and modern interfaces while retaining bank backing. They typically require shorter contracts than traditional providers and offer faster settlement. They suit organisations wanting bank credibility with more flexibility in commitment.

Developer-first platforms (Stripe) provide powerful, flexible tools designed primarily for businesses with technical capability. They offer excellent documentation and extensive integrations but assume ongoing technical management. They suit organisations with technical skills on the committee who need complex online payment integrations and can ensure those skills transfer at handover.

SME-focused simple providers (Square, SumUp, Zettle) prioritise ease of use and minimal commitment. They charge flat rates, require no contracts, and allow equipment to be purchased outright. They suit smaller organisations, informal groups, and those testing new payment approaches. The lack of contract can be an advantage for uncertain situations, but the provider relationship is transactional rather than institutional.

Direct Debit specialists (GoCardless) focus exclusively on bank-to-bank payments for recurring transactions. They offer lower fees than card payments for membership subscriptions and integrate well with accounting software. They suit membership-based organisations with regular payment cycles but cannot process ad-hoc card payments.

Nonprofit specialists (LibertyPay) serve registered charities specifically, offering Gift Aid integration and charity-specific features. They suit charitable organisations with donation income but may be overspecified for associations that aren't registered charities.

Based on what you have told us so far, we can now suggest which providers are most likely to suit your organisation. This section takes the priorities you ranked in Section III and matches them against what each provider offers.

We have assessed each provider against the four dimensions using publicly available data: Trustpilot ratings, published support hours, contract terms, settlement times, and statement descriptor formats. The assessments below are our best estimate of how each provider performs. You may adjust them based on your own research or conversations with providers.

You have now identified your priorities, understood the landscape, and narrowed your options. What remains is to make a decision you can defend, and to document that decision in a way that serves the organisation beyond your tenure, however long that tenure may be.

The best handover isn't explaining everything. It's writing down why. A future treasurer who understands your reasoning can make their own decisions. One who only knows what you chose is stuck defending a choice they don't understand.

The document you create now is for someone you'll never meet. You may hand it over next year. You may hand it over in fifteen years. Either way, the document should still make sense, should still explain not just what you chose but why you chose it.

Key terms you may encounter when comparing providers or reading contracts. Click any term to expand its definition.