Payment methods
Connect the card-payment gateway used by your public donation page, and understand how bank-transfer details and payment badges fit alongside it.
Your public donation page can take card payments online. For that to work, you connect your organisation's own Thawani account to WAQAF — Thawani is the payment gateway that runs the secure card checkout. This page explains how to connect it, what each setting does, and how it sits alongside the bank-transfer details and payment badges that also appear on your site.
You'd come here when you first set up online giving, when you switch from test mode to taking real donations, or when your Thawani keys change and the connection needs updating.
Who can do this. You need a role that grants manage on payment connections — that's the Site Manager (an organisation Owner or Admin can do it too). A Finance Manager can see the connection and its status but cannot enter or change the keys. Other site roles (Site Editor, Site Viewer) don't see this section at all. If the Payments tab is missing, or the fields are greyed out, your role doesn't allow it; see Members & roles.
Where to find it. Website → Settings → Payments.
What "payment methods" means here
There are three separate things that decide how supporters can give, and they're set up in different places. It helps to keep them apart:
- The card gateway (this page). Connecting Thawani is what lets the Donate button on your site take a card payment online. Without it, online card giving simply won't work.
- Bank-transfer details. If you'd rather supporters pay you by bank transfer, you display your bank accounts on the donation page instead. That's switched on per account under Donors → Settings (the public-transfer toggle), not here — see Banks & accounts.
- Payment badges. The small payment-method logos in your site footer (and any custom badges you add) are purely decorative trust marks. You manage them under The site footer; they don't connect anything or move any money.
This page is only about the first one: the live card connection.
Thawani processes donations in Omani Rial (OMR) only, and the connection is for
one-time project donations. Amounts everywhere in WAQAF are shown to three decimals
(1 OMR = 1000 baisa), so a gift reads as 25.000.
Before you start
You connect WAQAF to your charity's own Thawani account — not a WAQAF account. So before you begin, sign in to your Thawani dashboard and have these two values to hand:
- Your Secret key — the private key Thawani uses to authorise charges. Treat this like a password: never share it or paste it anywhere but here.
- Your Publishable key — the key that's safe to expose in the checkout page.
Thawani gives you separate keys for test and live. Use your test keys while you try things out, and only switch to your live keys when you're ready to take real money.
Connecting Thawani
Open Website → Settings → Payments
From the dashboard, go to Website, open Settings, and choose the Payments tab from the menu down the side. You'll see the Thawani checkout card. If a connection already exists, a Connected (or Inactive) badge sits beside the title.
Enter your keys
Paste your Secret key into the first field and your Publishable key into the second. The Secret key field is masked as you type, the way a password field is. WAQAF encrypts both keys before storing them, and never shows them back to you afterwards — so once saved, the fields look empty again, with a "Enter a new value to replace" placeholder. That's normal: it means the keys are safely stored, not lost.
Choose Live mode or test mode
The Live mode switch decides which Thawani environment WAQAF talks to:
- Off — test mode. Use this with your Thawani test keys to place practice donations that don't charge a real card.
- On — live mode. Real cards are charged. Only turn this on once you've entered your live keys.
Live mode and your keys must match. If you turn Live mode on but leave your test keys in place (or the reverse), checkout will fail for your donors. When you go live, update the keys and the switch together.
Decide whether to accept public donations
The Accept public donations switch is the on/off control for card giving on your live site. Leave it on to take donations; turn it off to pause online card giving without deleting your connection (your keys stay stored). When it's off, the card shows the Inactive badge.
Save the connection
Choose Save connection. To create a connection for the first time you must fill in both keys — the button stays disabled until you have. Once a connection exists, you can come back and change just the Live mode or Accept public donations switches and save without re-entering the keys; leave both key fields blank and your stored keys are kept. A confirmation toast tells you it saved.
Updating or removing the connection
To replace your keys — for example when you switch from test to live, or Thawani re-issues them — open the Payments tab, type the new key(s) into the field(s), and choose Save connection again. Entering a value replaces what's stored; leaving a field blank keeps the existing key.
To remove the connection entirely, choose Remove connection. This deletes the stored keys from WAQAF. Online card giving stops immediately, and to take card donations again you'd reconnect from scratch with your keys. Removing the connection does not touch any donation you've already received — past gifts and their records are untouched.
If you only see the connection's status and a note saying you can view but not manage credentials, your role is read-only here (for example a Finance Manager). Ask a Site Manager, Owner or Admin to make changes. This isn't a fault — WAQAF hides what your role can't reach.
A quick checklist before going live
Card payments handle real money, so before you flip Live mode on, confirm all three: your live Thawani keys are entered (not the test ones), Live mode is on, and Accept public donations is on. Then place one small test donation through your public site and check it arrives in your Thawani dashboard before you announce it widely.
See also
The site footer
Add the payment-method badges and trust marks shown at the bottom of your public site.
Banks & accounts
Set up bank accounts and choose which to display on your donation page for bank transfers.
Publishing & preview
Preview your site and publish it so the public can reach your donation page.
Your website
The map of every website setting, from theme and pages to domains and payments.