Newbie question - is there a way to have self-signup without gathering any credit card info?

Question

Totally new to civiccrm - we are a small UK makerspace, looking for a membership management system. We thought CCRM might be a good fit, so one of our members has spun up a test server to play round with. It looks great, but I can't seem to find any information about how we would allow self sign-up without gathering the credit card info.

We are a very small org and absolutely cannot handle the complexities of PCI compliance or the accompanying GDPR overhead of keeping that level of PII. That would cost us more in time and money than we pull in per year.

We just need a login + password, email and a "custom" field for standing order reference.

Is this possible?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You shouldn't need a payment processor to do a self-signup. But also - you don't need to meet the standards for PCI compliance that you're suggesting if you choose an appropriate payment processor. Use either an "off-site" processor like PayPal Standard, or one that loads Javascript on your page to collect credit card info so that it never touches your server (Stripe, and soon Authorize.net/Accept.js).

To answer your original question:

• If you're not using CiviMember at all, simply create a free-standing profile. This will let you collect data and create an account.
• If you use CiviMember but memberships are free, set up a contribution page with the Execute real-time monetary transactions and Contribution Amounts section enabled unchecked on the Amounts tab, while configuring the Membership tab.
• If you use CiviMember but memberships are paid, and you don't want to collect credit card info despite my reassurances, configure the contribution the same as the last scenario, but check the Pay Later option box.

Answer 2

Depending on your CMS you might be able to do all of that without the need for CiviCRM.

If you are worried about credit card information then CiviCRM has a number of payment processor options which mean you never see a credit card number, just the transaction ID of your payment processor of choice - check out https://civicrm.org/extensions/stripe-payment-processor as an example that integrates with Stripe.

If you think you still need a CiviCRM solution then Profiles are probably your friend - https://docs.civicrm.org/user/en/latest/organising-your-data/profiles/