Overview

This article explains why contacts may be labeled "Unknown" in your Kindful database. 

Linked Articles:

- Connect Stripe as a Payment Gateway

Basic transaction flow

When setting up your Kindful account, a payment gateway must be chosen to process donations. These options include Bloomerang Payments, Stripe, Authorize.Net, and PayPal. Once a gateway is connected, donations can be processed using different methods. Donations can be processed through Kindful donation pages, through a personal website via a donation plugin, through crowdfunding pages, and even in person using the Collect for Stripe or Payment (for Stripe) apps. 

When a donation is made, the donor's personal information and transaction information are synced with your Kindful account. This lets you keep track of gifts given, match gifts with donors, and grow your database.

Seeing "Unknown" contacts with transactions

Stripe transactions with the contact name "Unknown" may appear in Kindful. This means that Kindful has been notified of a new transaction from Stripe, but cannot detect a name for that specific transaction. Kindful is set up to still accept these transactions, so the gifts can be tracked even though no personal info. is attached to them. 

An "Unknown" contact can appear in Kindful because the originating application did not match a Stripe Contact with the Stripe transaction, or a Stripe Contact was not created. To see if a "Contact record" is associated with a transaction, you will need to log in to your Stripe account.

The Stripe Create integration is designed to work with other systems that:
- Create customer records in Stripe
- Populate the name field on the Customer record
- Or populate name on the Customer's Payment Sources in Stripe

Still have questions?

Feel free to send our support team an email, or you can chat with a representative from the lower left hand corner of your Kindful Admin account.