Digital Giving in the Church: What the Numbers Say — and What to Consider
Online giving and digital giving are nothing new. When we talk about online giving, we mean what you're probably already familiar with such as a website or app that accepts card or ACH payments. Digital giving is a bit broader, covering things like text-to-give, Google Pay, Apple Pay, Venmo, and similar tools. Swipe. Scan. Tap. There's no doubt these methods are convenient — but for faith-based organizations that rely on donations, the real questions are whether they're financially beneficial, and whether there are any theological considerations worth weighing.
Research Trends
Let's start with the hard numbers — statistics and facts from various sources. In 2025, 74% of churches offered online giving, up from just 14% in 2011 — a striking rate of adoption.[1] The biggest lag is among smaller congregations. The reasons aren't entirely clear, but it appears to come down to limited technical expertise and resources. Increasingly, online giving isn't just an option for churches and other faith-based organizations — it is becoming an expectation.
According to Barna research, nearly 44% of adults prefer digital giving.[2] Unsurprisingly, younger generations are more comfortable with — and more likely to prefer — digital methods, while older generations tend to lean back toward traditional giving like cash and checks. But as the "cashless" trend continues to take hold in retail, digital giving may become the default for most people before long.
The outcome for churches that adopt online giving is, unsurprisingly, an increase in donations. According to MinistryBrands, those churches saw a 3.5% increase in giving, compared to an average growth rate of 1.7%.[3] Churches that adopt online giving also see more consistent giving with over 40% of all online giving transactions as automatic recurring gifts. This gives churches more predictability for planning and budgeting.
The bottom line is that digital giving has a measurable, positive financial impact for churches and faith-based organizations.
Leadership Considerations
Beyond the financial case, there's a separate — and arguably more important — question for churches and faith-based organizations to wrestle with: what are the theological and biblical implications of how giving happens? As a church or faith-based organization, a set of values and convictions shapes everything you do, including how money moves through your community. Here are some questions worth sitting with before implementing digital or online giving.
How does digital giving align with the call in Malachi to "bring the whole tithe into the storehouse"?
Malachi 3:10 is often cited as the biblical anchor for tithing, and some leaders read "storehouse" quite literally — tithing is meant to be tied to physical presence in the local congregation, an act of gathering with God's people, not just a transaction. Under that view, digital giving can feel like it strips away something relational: the offering plate passing hand to hand, the physical act of giving as part of corporate worship. That's a question for each local church's leadership to work through. For a non-church faith-based organization, the general expectation is that giving to them supplements a donor's local church giving rather than replacing it, so this particular tension mostly doesn't apply.
Others argue the principle behind the passage — bringing your resources faithfully and fully to support the local church — doesn't hinge on the mechanism. A wire transfer or a recurring ACH draft can be just as much "bringing the tithe into the storehouse" as a check dropped in a plate, as long as it's directed to the local church and given with the right heart. Under this view, the "storehouse" is the recipient (the local church), not the delivery method.
I'm not going to suggest there's one absolute, correct answer here — but it's worth having your leadership team articulate where you land. It will shape how you talk about giving from the pulpit, and the question will inevitably come up from donors themselves.
Should you accept credit cards, or only debit cards and ACH?
This question often gets framed as practical, but it has a real stewardship dimension. Credit card giving means a donor could be giving money they don't actually have — potentially going into debt, or paying interest, to make a gift. Some leaders see this as a serious concern: an organization's role is to encourage healthy financial stewardship, not inadvertently enable debt, even for a good cause.
You could argue that adults are capable of making their own financial choices — but that doesn't mean an organization should enable, or even tacitly encourage, poor financial stewardship. In practice, accepting a debit card or ACH payment isn't much different from accepting a check. Credit cards are a different story. If I'm honest, there's something a little disingenuous about it — encouraging people to borrow money they may or may not have in order to support your ministry.
What about digital payment platforms and mobile wallets (Apple Pay, Google Pay, Venmo, etc.)?
These platforms raise a slightly different set of questions than "online giving" in general, mostly around trust, security, and stewardship of donor data. Because they route through third-party companies, church leaders should ask: Who has access to donor information? What fees are being deducted, and are they transparent to the giver? Is the platform PCI-compliant and secure enough to handle sensitive financial data responsibly? These methods also tend to feel more "disconnected" from the act of giving itself.
What about recurring/automated giving?
There's a strong case to be made for it. It lowers the barrier for donors who genuinely want to give consistently but are prone to forgetting, or who find it easier to commit once and let it run than to make (and remember) a decision every single week. For many people, setting up a recurring gift isn't a way of checking out — it's simply how they've decided, once and intentionally, to be faithful with their giving going forward.
I'll cut to the chase on my own take, though. For non-churches, recurring giving is a great thing — I use it myself to support kids and missionaries I sponsor. But for churches, something about it feels a little "off." I'm not sure I want my tithe to my local church to be so disconnected from my week-to-week life. There's something spiritually valuable in making a conscious decision to give each week or month — even when the bills are high or the balance is low. That's a faith-building exercise that autopilot may quietly rob us of. When I make the gift myself and see the balance, I have to work through the hesitation and choose to give joyfully anyway.
The data is clear: digital giving is convenient, increasingly expected, and financially beneficial for churches and faith-based organizations. But the numbers only tell half the story. The bigger question isn't whether you can adopt online and digital giving — it's how you adopt it in a way that reflects your organization's convictions about stewardship, community, and what it means to give faithfully. There's no universal right answer to questions like these; the right answer is the one your leadership has actually wrestled with, rather than the one that arrived by default because a platform made it the easiest option. Adopt the tools that serve your people well — and be intentional about the ones you don't.
[1] https://www.onlinegiving.org/s...