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What is a Token Migration and What Should I Expect?

Molly Kinder
  • Updated

For new organizations making the switch to Virtuous CRM+, you want to ensure all of your recurring donors continue their regular giving without interruption! Migrating your recurring givers is an essential part of your long-term success using Virtuous Giving and Payments by Virtuous. If your organization meets the criteria below, this migration of givers and giving information should happen entirely in the background without your donors needing to lift a finger. Let’s walk through the requirements, terminology, and timing of migrating recurring gifts, for a Token Migration.

Table of Contents

  1. Overview
  2. Terminology
  3. Requirements for Token Migration
  4. Timing: How Long Should I Expect This Process to Take?
  5. Steps to Migrate Tokens
  6. FAQ

Overview

When a donor creates a new recurring gift, their payment information is securely saved as a payment token. This token acts as a reference, enabling future transactions to be processed without the need to store the actual card details. During migration, these tokens can be transferred securely which eliminates the need for donors to update their payment information or take any additional steps to manage their recurring gift. Token migration is a standard, behind-the-scenes process that ensures recurring gifts continue without interruption.

Terminology

  • Recurring Gifts: Recurring Gifts represent a donor's commitment to providing regular, ongoing support for your organization.
  • Tokens: This is the encrypted payment information for recurring gifts and is crucial for the migration. Tokens hold no details on frequency or amounts, only payment method data. A unique ID is vital for connecting to schedules and amounts.
  • Virtuous Payments powered by Stripe: The new Payment Processor your organization will be using to process online gifts
  • Legacy Processor: This is the processor the customer is moving away from. It could be Authorize.net, BBMS, even Stripe!
  • Schedules: The Schedule is the information on the Recurring Gift charge amount and frequency. This connects to the token based on ID to determine when and how much to charge the donor.
  • sFTP: sFTP or Secure File Transfer Protocol, is the only way to share the tokens file with Stripe. Some processors will share the tokens directly with Stripe via an sFTP.
  • PGP Key: PGP, or Public Encryption, Key is the key in which the tokens file should be encrypted with.

Requirements for Token Migration

In order for our Payments team to be able to bring your recurring donors and donation information, there are a few minimum requirements.

  1. Your organization must have at least 50 active recurring gift schedules in your current payment processor. If your organization has fewer than 50 total active recurring gift schedules, you will need to manually move these recurring gifts by reaching out to donors individually. Learn more about communicating with recurring donors to make the switch here.
  2. Your Virtuous Giving Forms must be live on your website. You wouldn’t want donors to create new recurring gifts on your Legacy Processor once you’ve made the switch. In order for our Payments team to migrate recurring donors, your Virtuous Giving must be active.
  3. Your Legacy Payment Processor must release the Tokens. As the Payments team requires the credit card Tokens to create giving schedules in Virtuous, we rely on your Legacy Processor to send the Tokens.

Timing: How Long Should I Expect This Process to Take?

Because the process of Migrating Tokens involves communicating with your Legacy Processor and there are many steps involved, the time frame of successfully bringing your recurring gifts over to Virtuous Payments depends. On average, a Token Migration can take anywhere from 30-90 days from receiving the tokens to the first day of processing those gifts in Virtuous Giving. But it’s important to note that this may take longer with some Legacy Processors to provide the tokens file to our Payments team and could extend the overall process timeline. It’s important to communicate if your organization has any deadlines from your current giving platform or potentially will lose access to the files.

Overall, this process requires attention to detail, collaboration from multiple teams, and additional checks to ensure the data gets transferred correctly.

Steps to Migrate Tokens

Now that you understand the big idea of migrating tokens, the terminology, and the general timeline of what to expect, let’s dive into an overview of the steps you will go through to move your recurring gifts over to Virtuous Payments:

  1. Kick Off Call: To officially begin the process of migrating tokens, you will have a kick off call with a member of the Payments team to give an overview of the entire process and prepare your organization for each step along the way.
  2. Request Tokens: Your first step after you kick off is requesting tokens from your current (or Legacy) processor. Your Virtuous Payments specialist will help you communicate the required information to your Legacy Processor to begin the process.
  3. Prepare for Token Transfer: After requesting Tokens from your Legacy Processor, there are a few items to confirm to have a successful transfer including: Unique ID for Tokens to match gift schedules, the timeline of transfer, if schedules are transferred, and how your Legacy Processor is transferring the tokens (directly to Stripe or to your organization to be uploaded via sFTP).
  4. Tokens are Transferred: Once Stripe has received the Tokens, your organization will be provided with a handful of IDs of recurring gift schedules to cross-check and ensure the Tokens are matched to the correct Donor.
  5. Tokens are Imported: Once Tokens have been imported, Stripe will send your organization a Mapping Output file to support matching the Tokens to the Gift Schedules.
  6. Schedules are Up-to-Date: During this step, the Virtuous Payments Support team will work with your organization using the Mapping Output file from Stripe to review and create all Schedules for Recurring Gifts.
  7. Schedules Imported and Processing Begins: Your organization will confirm a start date for all recurring gifts to be processed in Virtuous. You will be provided with a file if there are any failures of processing. Once processing in Virtuous Giving has a start date, your organization will need to confirm an end date of processing in your Legacy system. For example, if processing with Virtuous is set to begin March 2nd, you will need your Legacy Processor to end on March 1st.

FAQ

Who will help my organization through this process?

Your organization will have a dedicated Virtuous Payments Operations team member assigned to help guide you through the Token Migration Process.

If your organization is currently in Implementation of Virtuous CRM+ and Virtuous Giving, your assigned Implementation Manager will help kickstart this discussion and process. Your Implementation Manager will help connect you with the Payments Operation Team to assign a team member. If your organization is not currently in Implementation, your Customer Success Manager will help assign you a dedicated Virtuous Payments Operations Team Member.

If you are not sure who to connect with, you can reach out to support@virtuous.org for help.

How can I prepare for this process?

Data tidiness in general of your legacy database is crucial. The Token Migration process will be smoothest if your data is the most up-to-date, particularly with donor email addresses.

Do I need to be live in Virtuous CRM+ before I can start this process?

Sort of. Your organization will need to have Virtuous Giving Forms live AND be no longer accepting donations via your legacy system to import the Tokens. The process may be able to begin before you are fully live in Virtuous CRM+, as the first step is requesting tokens for your legacy processor. Virtuous cannot import the Tokens until your CRM is live, though. Your Payments Support team member will give you guidance on when to begin the process.

Why might there be a failure with a recurring gift schedule?

While the Token Migration process attempts to prevent all errors in moving your recurring gifts into Virtuous, there may be failures that arise with schedules. Common issues that can cause failures to migrate the Tokens include:

  • Missing data: if the schedule was missing Donor data like email or name, this may cause a failure on the specific schedule
  • No Token: if your legacy processor was unable to provide the Token for a specific recurring gift, this will cause a failure.

 

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