Everything about Stripe and PayPal below comes from their own help pages, read in November 2026. Menus change, so check the names in your own account. This is general information, not legal or tax advice.
Who should own the organization's Stripe and PayPal accounts?
The organization, never a person. In practice that means three things.
- The organization's legal name and EIN. An EIN is the nine-digit tax number the IRS gives your organization. Stripe tells US tax-exempt organizations to sign up with their organization name and EIN, and to check both on the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search first. PayPal's nonprofit setup page says "an authorized representative of your nonprofit needs to sign up for a business account," choosing the Nonprofit Organization option.
- A login email the organization controls. Use a role address on your own domain, such as treasurer@ or giving@, not someone's Gmail. Stripe's help center explains why: if you cannot sign in and do not have the account's email, you have to change the account's owner through Stripe. With a role address, the next treasurer simply resets the password.
- A business account, never a personal one. PayPal says ownership can change only on Business accounts, and only with documents. Its help also says the name on an account can't be changed to another person's name, so a volunteer's personal account can't be handed over to the organization.
Both providers also need a real person to verify. Stripe calls this person the account representative, and PayPal asks its primary users to confirm their identity with personal details, including a Social Security number. That person is checked for identity. The organization still owns the account. Choose someone with authority in the organization, such as the treasurer or a board officer.
Should the freelancer who built the website own the accounts?
No. A web developer needs the keys, not the account. In Stripe, invite them with the Developer role. Stripe's role list says a Developer can create API keys but "can't invite team members or change the account owner." The same list shows a Developer can also refund payments and pay out the balance, so remove them when the work is done. For PayPal, the website needs a client ID and secret from PayPal's developer dashboard, which you sign in to with the PayPal account. PayPal's help doesn't say whether an additional user can create these, so the simplest way is for the treasurer to sign in while the freelancer guides them.
How do we give two people access?
Give each person their own login. Never share one password. Both providers support this.
| Stripe role | What it can do | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Owner | Everything, including closing the account. There can only be one. | The organization's role address |
| Super Administrator | Everything except changing the owner and deleting the default bank account | The person who would take over |
| Administrator | Almost everything, including bank details and team members. Cannot change the owner. | A second officer |
| Developer | API keys and settings. No team management. | Your web developer |
| View Only | See payments, payouts and reports, change nothing | A bookkeeper or finance committee |
Stripe's advice when inviting people is to "Grant the lowest permission required by the user to perform their job." Invitations expire after 10 days.
Stripe also offers two-party approvals. An Administrator can require a second person to approve actions such as "Bank account is added, updated or deleted" and "Admin is invited to account," and "A user can't approve their own request." These two rules protect against the most damaging change, someone pointing payouts to a different bank account. Stripe's list also includes payments and subscriptions. Leave those alone, because your donation form creates them every time someone gives.
PayPal lets a Business account add up to 200 users, each with their own login and chosen permissions, under Account Settings and Manage users.
Turn on two-step sign-in, and keep the backup codes somewhere the organization controls. Stripe shows its backup code once: "It's only displayed once, so it's important to write it down and keep it safe."
How do we change the owner of a Stripe account?
The current owner transfers it from the Team settings. Stripe's steps:
- Make sure the new owner is a team member with the Administrator or Super Administrator role. If not, invite them as a Super Administrator and wait for them to accept.
- Set their role to Super Administrator and save.
- Open the menu next to their name and choose Transfer ownership.
The account representative is a separate step. Under Settings and Business details, remove the old representative and nominate the new one. Stripe's help page says you must nominate the new representative within seven days of removing the previous one, "or payouts may be paused on your account." So nominate the new person first and have their details ready.
How do we change who owns a PayPal business account?
PayPal handles it as a change of the account's contact name. Its charity help article describes it like this: go to Account Settings, open Account owner information, and choose Change next to the name. PayPal may ask you to upload proof of Social Security, a photo ID, and a letter on the organization's letterhead asking to remove the current name and add the new one. The letter must include the PayPal account's email address and be signed by an authorized signer. PayPal says ownership can change only on Business accounts, and only with proper documents. Menu names vary by country and account, so follow PayPal's current help steps.
What if the volunteer who opened the account has left and will not answer?
Both providers send you to their support team. Neither publishes a guaranteed timeline.
- Stripe: "If the current owner is no longer available, you can still request an ownership transfer by contacting Stripe Support." Stripe sends a secure link to verify your identity and your relationship with the organization. "The existing account owner and administrators will be notified by email and SMS when a transfer request is initiated," and they can cancel it before it is finalized. Ask the former volunteer first if you can. If you are already an Administrator and only lost your two-step sign-in, another Administrator can reset it from Team settings.
- PayPal: its charity article says that if you cannot get into the organization's account, or only have access as an additional user, "you won't be able to change the primary user in the account. You'll need to contact us to make this change." Have the letterhead letter, the EIN and your ID ready.
Some cases have no documented path at either provider. Examples are an account opened under the volunteer's own name and Social Security number rather than the organization's, or one nobody can describe. Stripe does not publish a way to convert an individual's account into an organization's, and PayPal's personal accounts cannot change owner. Ask support, and if the answer is no, plan for a new account using the steps below.
Why not just open a new account?
Because your monthly donors do not come with it. Stripe's subscriptions overview says: "When you create a subscription, Stripe automatically generates invoices, attempts payment collection, and manages the subscription status throughout its lifecycle." That schedule, and the donor's saved card, sit in the account that created it. A PayPal recurring gift is likewise set up under a plan in the PayPal account that created it, and PayPal bills it from there.
So a new account means every recurring donor signs up again on your form. If you have to do it, keep the old account open and running while donors move over, and cancel each old gift only after its replacement has charged. Our guide to leaving a donation platform without losing donors has the order of steps and an email you can send.
What happens on our WordPress site when the keys change?
If you use Donor Merchant, the keys live under Donor Merchant > Settings > Payments. Choose Manage next to Stripe or PayPal. Donor Merchant never shows a saved secret key again, so a new person cannot read the old secrets back from the site. Copy keys from the Stripe or PayPal dashboard instead.
- New keys, same account. Do this whenever someone who had the keys leaves. Stripe says to "Rotate keys when team members with access to the keys leave your organization," and the old key can keep working for up to 7 days while you switch. Recurring gifts are unaffected, because the plugin keeps talking to the same account. If the publishable key changed, Donor Merchant forgets its saved Apple Pay domain check, so press Register domain next to "Apple Pay domain" on the Stripe screen again. For PayPal, keep the same app in PayPal's developer dashboard and replace its secret there if the dashboard offers that, rather than creating a new app. A new app means a new client ID, which Donor Merchant treats as a different account (next point), and PayPal's webhook documentation says payments processed on one app "will not generate events for webhooks subscribed to a different REST app associated with the same account."
- A different account. When the Stripe publishable key or PayPal client ID changes, Donor Merchant clears what it saved for that mode: its recurring-donation product, its PayPal plans and its Stripe card-update page settings. New recurring gifts are then created in the new account. Existing ones stay in the old account, which keeps charging them. The plugin works with one set of keys at a time. It checks every Stripe notice against the one webhook signing secret you saved, and each Stripe webhook endpoint has its own secret, so notices from the old account's endpoint are refused. It checks every PayPal notice by asking PayPal to verify it against the one Webhook ID you saved, so expect the old account's notices to fail that check too. Once you switch, plan on renewals in the old account no longer appearing in Donations. The portal's Cancel and Update card buttons and the staff "Cancel recurring gift" action use the new keys, so they cannot reach those gifts either. Manage them in the old account's dashboard until each donor has moved.
After any change, make a small real gift of your own and check that it shows up in Donations.
What should a handover checklist include?
- List every account the giving depends on: Stripe, PayPal, the bank, the web host, the domain name, the WordPress admin, and the mailbox behind your role email address.
- Check that each one is in the organization's legal name, signs in with an organization email address, and pays out to the organization's bank account.
- Add the incoming person with their own login (Stripe Super Administrator, PayPal user, WordPress administrator) before the outgoing person leaves.
- Transfer Stripe ownership, and nominate the new account representative within seven days of removing the old one.
- Change the PayPal account owner name with the signed letter.
- Change the role mailbox password, and move two-step backup codes into the organization's password manager.
- Remove the departing person from the Stripe team, PayPal users and WordPress administrators.
- Rotate the Stripe keys and, if the departing person had it, the PayPal app's secret. Paste the new ones into the website and make a test gift.
- If the departing person was the "responsible party" on your EIN, the IRS says "Changes in responsible parties must be reported to the IRS within 60 days" on Form 8822-B. Ask your accountant if you are not sure.
- Remove your web developer's access when their work is finished.
Sources
- Stripe: Change the owner of a Stripe account (read November 2026)
- Stripe: Update the business representative in the Dashboard (read November 2026)
- Stripe: User roles and Start a team (read November 2026)
- Stripe: Set up two-party approvals (read November 2026)
- Stripe: API keys (read November 2026)
- Stripe: Change the email address associated with a Stripe account (read November 2026)
- Stripe: Tax information for US nonprofits (read November 2026)
- Stripe: Backup codes for two-step authentication and Can't complete two-step authentication? (read November 2026)
- Stripe: How subscriptions work (read November 2026)
- PayPal: How to set up a nonprofit account (read November 2026)
- PayPal: How do I change the contact name on my charity PayPal account? (read November 2026)
- PayPal: How do I change the name on my PayPal account? (read November 2026)
- PayPal: How do I manage users on my Business account? (read November 2026)
- PayPal Developer: Webhooks (read November 2026)
- IRS: About Form 8822-B (read November 2026)