This is a meaningful moment for our company and the amazing churches we serve. Together, Pushpay and Nurture technology will work to close the shepherding gap, equipping ministry leaders with the tools, insights and action to know every person by name, understand where they are on their spiritual journey, and confidently see that every person in their church is being cared for. All without making changes to your existing tech stack. 

What excites me most is that this solves a problem we’ve heard from our customers for years—and it’s one we couldn’t fix on our own. 

Know them by name

Jesus says in John 10:14: “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me.” We’ve been building towards this concept for a long time at Pushpay; to deepen connection and help people be known in their community. If you’ve followed Pushpay over the past year in particular, you may have heard us talk about the notion of the Engagement Journey. It’s our vision for how technology can help ministry leaders walk alongside the different touchpoints of someone’s faith journey—from the moment they watch a livestream for the first time, to the day they become a fully committed member of a church.

We’ve been building toward that vision, and have made significant progress to deliver the digital tools leaders need to help guide their people in their personal faith journey. Through our giving platform, ChMS, Resi, and our recently launched AI capabilities, we’ve helped churches bring people in their front doors and keep them engaged through giving, groups, streaming, and more. This is work that I’m immensely proud of, and it’s making a real impact on ministry. 

But there’s been a blind spot we couldn’t ignore. 

Picture this: Someone starts pulling back. Their attendance drops off. Their giving slows. They registered for an event but didn’t attend. Or maybe they stopped engaging with your weekly emails. The signals are all there—but they’re scattered across eight or nine different systems. 

No individual staff member has been able to connect the dots. By the time anyone notices, this potential disciple is already lost. These quiet departures, repeated across hundreds of households and churches every year, is what we call the shepherding gap. 

That’s the gap Nurture was built to close.

Nurture compiles data from 17+ integrations—including church management systems, giving platforms, and communication tools—and surfaces real-time engagement signals for ministry leaders. As the first ministry action system for churches, Nurture routes the best course of action to a pastor or staff member before someone slips out the back door for good. 

The software doesn’t replace the human connection at the heart of ministry. It makes directed, intentional connection possible at scale.

For nearly fifteen years, Pushpay has been helping churches attract, welcome, and mobilize their people. Adding Nurture to our product portfolio allows us to complete the pastoral care layer of the Engagement Journey. Together, we’re equipping ministry leaders with tools to help them develop seekers through the conscientious discipleship the Church is called to deliver.

Meet the Nurture team 

Nurture and Pushpay share the same heart for ministry, as well as a desire to help cultivate authentic human connection in the Church. Nurture.io was founded by Luke Denton, a former executive pastor at one of the largest churches in the United States. He built Nurture because he lived this problem firsthand: watching people quietly slip away from the congregation he loved, while his staff lacked both the visibility to catch issues in time and the tools to act on red flags.

We know that most churches openly embrace technology as a critical component in their ministry today. Pushpay’s most recent research found that 91% of church leaders say technology has helped them better care for their community. 

However, only 9% said that technology primarily helps with discipleship. This is the very work Nurture is built to support. 

Churches leveraging Nurture’s platform see nearly 2.8x more of their at-risk attendees return to the Church, and those churches are nearly three times more likely to re-engage lapsed volunteers. They also see a 145% increase on average in the number of lapsed donors who begin giving again.

Luke and his team embody the mission of the Church. They come to the table with a genuine understanding of what it feels like to be on staff, responsible for the souls in your care—but perhaps without the tools to understand those who need your guidance the  most. 

As we bring our companies more closely together, Luke will continue in a leadership capacity, working with Pushpay to integrate our two platforms. I personally couldn’t be more grateful to have him and the Nurture team onboard. 

What this means for your ministry

If you’re a Pushpay or Resi customer, this is exciting news. Nurture will be able to offer a more complete set of tools to know and care for your people at every stage of their faith journey.

Equally important: You don’t have to be a Pushpay customer to benefit from Nurture’s ministry action system. Nurture’s commitment to continue integrating across any church’s entire technology stack—regardless of the digital tools already in place—remains fully intact. 

In the near term, Nurture will continue operating as it does today, with Luke and his team focused on serving their customers and continuing to build and enhance their technology. This means that customer support, product development, and maintaining the Nurture brand is business as usual. What Nurture customers can look forward to over time is greater investment in the Nurture roadmap, and more robust support, both for product development and customer growth. In the meantime, our teams will be working to thoughtfully enhance the Pushpay, Resi, and the Nurture experience for the benefit of our customers. We’ll be sharing updates as that work continues.

A bold vision for the future  

The Pushpay team believes that coming together with Nurture will establish a foundation for something bigger than either of our companies could achieve alone.

I’m passionate about the church technology industry because I’ve seen the amazing work these tools accomplish. Digital solutions help ministry leaders better understand their congregations, and the platform Nurture has pioneered is the next step forward in church tech. Their capabilities allow ministries to not only view their congregation’s data, but to truly know every person by name and by story, and these insights empower leaders to act with informed intention as they shepherd their disciples.

We could not be more excited about what Pushpay and Nurture are building together. We look forward to sharing more updates in the coming months, as our teams thoughtfully develop functionality that will enhance the Pushpay and Nurture experience for everyone striving to grow His Kingdom.

We agree on one foundational truth: giving is sacred. Churches deserve transparency, tools that honor both donors and mission, and partners who help maximize what reaches ministry.

Where perspectives differ is in the assumption that sustainable, for-profit technology inherently conflicts with ministry values. The reality is more nuanced. Long-term investment in security, reliability, and innovation is what enables churches to grow generosity safely and at scale.

The question isn’t whether technology providers earn a profit. It’s what churches receive in return.

Help every person feel known and connected

Create space for relationships to flourish beyond Sunday morning, turning fleeting faces into a deeply connected church family.

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What processing fees fund

Every church platform charges processing fees. Some are higher, some are lower. But the number on the invoice doesn’t tell the whole story.

What matters is what happens after someone hits “give.”

When most platforms process a donation:

The transaction processes. But there’s no system working to increase success rates or recover authorization failures.

If the card fails? The church gets notified and has to figure it out themselves.

If the card expires? Recurring gifts stop until someone manually reaches out.

If the payment gateway goes down? Those donations are lost.

What Pushpay’s processing infrastructure delivers:

Our processing fees fund systems built specifically to help churches receive more donations, not just collect them:

• 95%+ transaction success rate vs 92% industry average. That 3%+ difference means more donations reach your church. We optimize routing and approval rates so fewer donations are declined.
• $126 million in failed payments recovered annually. When cards fail or expire, automated prompts ask donors to fix the issue and offer make-up gifts. 80% say yes. For a church of 500, that’s typically $64,000 in gifts that would have been lost.
• $48 million protected by Assured^Ⓡ Payments annually. When third-party payment gateways go down, we queue donations and process them when systems recover. Other platforms lose those gifts entirely. A mid-sized church averages $8,200 saved per year from this protection alone.
• 33% ACH adoption vs 20% industry average. We add ACH options front and center on mobile. Other platforms bury it or hide it entirely, which means churches pay higher credit card fees on donations.

Processing fees reinvested into church-specific innovation make this possible.

Why we built our processing differently

Most church platforms outsource their entire payment operation to third-party providers and act as simple pass-throughs. We made a different choice.

Pushpay operates as an ISO (Independent Sales Organization) in partnership with a payment processor. That means we own and directly manage the merchant processing relationships and payment mechanics, control the financial services technology stack, and bear responsibility for the entire donation experience.

In practical terms:

• Churches call us, not a third party. When there’s a question about a donation or failed transaction, you talk to someone who understands ministry, not a generic support team asking for merchant IDs.
• We control processing optimization and routing. When approval rates drop or patterns change, we adjust systems in real-time rather than relying on a vendor’s generic settings.
• We build church-specific recovery systems. Generic payment processors don’t distinguish between a subscription box and a recurring tithe. Our failed payment recovery speaks to donors in ways that honor the giving relationship because we designed it specifically for churches.
• We can innovate without waiting for permission. Features like Assured Payments and intelligent ACH promotion exist because we control the experience layer and can build what churches need, not what a generic processor offers everyone.

Being an ISO means we absorb more processing risk and compliance responsibility than platforms that plug into another system, leaving customers exposed to greater scrutiny by the payment ecosystems. But it also means we can deliver results that matter: higher approval rates, smarter recovery, and protections built for how churches actually operate.

Help every person feel known and connected

Create space for relationships to flourish beyond Sunday morning, turning fleeting faces into a deeply connected church family.

Get a demo

Complete visibility into every transaction

We handle deposits differently than most platforms. When donations come in, we deposit the full amount into your account each day. You see exactly what donors gave. Then we invoice you monthly for the processing fees.

Most platforms deduct fees before depositing funds (net settlement). You only see what’s left after they take their cut.

Our approach (gross settlement) gives you complete visibility. You can match your bank deposits directly to what donors gave. Our invoices break down everything separately: total donations received, processing costs, and your net amount.

If a donor says they gave $100, you’ll see that full $100 in your daily deposit. Then at month-end, you’ll see the processing fee on your invoice. You can trace every dollar.

Churches deserve visibility into every dollar. Not because we have to provide it, but because it’s the right thing to do.

Innovation that drives ministry forward

Sustainable investment allows us to build features that move the entire industry forward.

Last year alone, we launched multiple innovations that increase generosity and reduce administrative work:

• AI for Giving Data helps finance teams get instant answers to questions like “Who gave last Easter but not this year?” without running manual reports or exporting spreadsheets
• AI for People Search helps ministry leaders identify who needs follow-up, who’s at risk of leaving, and who’s ready to serve through simple questions instead of complex filters
• QuickGive reduces donation time to under 6 seconds with Apple Pay
• Embedded Giving keeps donors on your website while maintaining your branding throughout the entire giving experience.
• Agent 9 brings AI to Rock RMS through our partnership with 9 Embers. Build complex data views, write SQL queries, and summarize member profiles using plain English instead of technical filters.

The Ultimate Guide to AI Church Engagement

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The questions churches should be asking

Pushpay isn’t the only platform that can serve churches well. Different churches have different needs, and that’s okay. The right platform depends on what matters most to your ministry.

But when evaluating any platform, churches should ask:

• What’s your actual transaction success rate? Not what you aim for. What you measure.
• Are you able to recover failed payments, or just notify us when they happen? 
• What happens to donations when your gateway goes down? Do they queue and retry, or disappear forever?
• How many of our donors will use ACH on mobile? If the platform hides it, churches pay more.
• Where do your processing profits actually go? Into church-specific innovation, or into general business operations of a third-party payment processor unrelated to ministry?

Real stewardship maximizes what reaches your ministry

At Pushpay, we see ourselves as ministry partners helping remove friction between a donor’s heart and the mission they support.

Stewardship isn’t about eliminating fees. It’s about maximizing mission impact.

When processing fees fund innovation that helps churches receive more donations, reduce manual administrative work, and focus staff time on ministry instead of systems, that’s stewardship working as a catalyst.

Healthy partnership requires transparency, shared outcomes, and mutual accountability. We’re committed to all three.

The church-tech space benefits from providers who challenge each other to serve churches better. These conversations push all of us to be more transparent, more innovative, and more focused on outcomes that matter.

We welcome that challenge.

Because when technology empowers ministry leaders to spend less time managing systems and more time caring for people, the Kingdom wins.

Spend less time on tech and more time with people

Streamline your administration and eliminate digital barriers so your team can focus on what matters most—building a community where everyone is known.

Get a demo

The young mom who stopped coming and no one on the staff was flagged. The new couple who can’t get involved in a connect group because the process is unclear. The family who didn’t receive comms about an upcoming event.

Behind each of those moments is a system that didn’t talk to another system.

Technology should ease that load. Too often, it complicates it.

That’s why Pushpay’s integration ecosystem exists: to help churches stop juggling systems and start moving as one connected ministry.

Help every person feel known and connected

Create space for relationships to flourish beyond Sunday morning, turning fleeting faces into a deeply connected church family.

Get a demo

The cost of disconnected tools

When systems don’t talk to each other, the impact shows up everywhere:

• Staff time disappears into manual exports and re-entry
• Giving data sits in one place, people data in another
• Communication tools operate without real context
• Leaders hesitate because reports don’t quite line up

None of that helps anyone care for people well.

Pushpay’s approach is different. Instead of forcing churches into a rigid, closed platform where every workflow has to conform to a single system’s assumptions, Pushpay connects the tools churches already rely on. Many all-in-one solutions require ministries to abandon existing processes and retrain staff from scratch; Pushpay works as a hub that lets best-in-class tools share data without dictating how ministry must operate.

An ecosystem built around real church workflows

Pushpay supports 80+ integration partners across every major area of church operations (view the full integrations directory), forming a connected toolkit that mirrors how ministry actually happens.

That includes:

• Church management systems (ChMS)
• Accounting and finance tools
• Communication and engagement platforms
• Background checks and child safety tools
• Donor analytics and generosity insights
• Event, facilities, and volunteer solutions
• Online streaming and media platforms

The goal isn’t more software. It’s fewer silos.

Giving data where it belongs

Giving is personal. It also touches nearly every part of church operations.

Pushpay integrates with leading ChMS platforms like Planning Center, FellowshipOne, Ministry Platform, Rock RMS, and Shelby Systems, allowing donation data to flow automatically into the systems churches already use for reporting and pastoral follow-up.

That means fewer manual imports, fewer reconciliation errors, and one reliable source of truth for generosity data. Finance teams reclaim hours previously lost to spreadsheets and batch uploads, pastors gain confidence in the stories behind the numbers, and donors experience consistency that builds trust over time.

Communication that feels connected, not fragmented

In Pushpay’s 2025 survey, 51% of church leaders named communication as their top challenge.

That’s not surprising. Messages lose effectiveness when communication tools aren’t connected to real engagement data.

Pushpay integrations with platforms like Mailchimp, StudioC, and other communication tools let churches send messages based on attendance, giving patterns, group involvement, and lifecycle moments instead of static lists. When systems stay in sync, communication becomes more timely and relevant, without staff having to export one more list on a Friday afternoon just to make Sunday work.

This matters.

Spend less time on tech and more time with people

Streamline your administration and eliminate digital barriers so your team can focus on what matters most—building a community where everyone is known.

Get a demo

Expanding generosity without adding complexity

Generosity looks different today than it did ten years ago.

Pushpay integrations support modern giving paths that meet people where they are:

• Stock and crypto giving through partners like Engiven
• Tap-to-give kiosks for in-person moments
• Text-to-give and mobile-first experiences
• Advanced donor analytics with tools like MortarStone

Each integration expands what churches can offer without introducing yet another dashboard to manage or another login to remember, which is especially important when the same staff member is often reconciling gifts, printing name tags, and resetting the check-in iPad between services.

Safety, stewardship, and trust

Child safety, volunteer screening, and compliance aren’t optional. They’re foundational.

Pushpay integrates with background check and protection partners so screening, renewals, and training fit naturally into existing workflows, instead of living in a separate system that someone has to remember to check once a quarter. It’s quieter, more consistent, and easier to maintain over time.

One hub, many partners

Pushpay’s integration strategy reflects a clear philosophy: be the hub, not the bottleneck.

Churches don’t need technology that dictates how ministry must work. They need systems that adapt to their size, staffing realities, and pace of change.

That’s why Pushpay combines:

• A robust platform through ChurchStaq and ParishStaq
• An open API that supports flexibility
• Preferred Partners that offer practical value
• A growing ecosystem shaped by actual church constraints

And yes, integration work isn’t glamorous — but anyone who has ever reconciled year-end giving knows how much it matters.

Technology should serve the mission, not slow it down

At its best, church technology fades into the background, clearing space for people to do the work they were called to do without fighting their systems along the way.

Pushpay’s integration ecosystem connects the tools you already use, reduces the operational friction your team feels every week, and creates a foundation that can adapt as your ministry grows. If you’re curious what’s possible, explore the full integrations directory and see how your existing tools could work together more smoothly.

The future of church technology will belong to systems that stay flexible, connected, and ready for what ministry asks next.