A church we work with replaced its $3,500 lobby giving kiosk last month with a stack of NFC pucks the size of a poker chip. The pucks sit in the pew racks next to the hymnals. A guest taps a phone against one, a giving page opens in the browser, Apple Pay or Google Pay handles the rest, and the gift is finished before the offering basket reaches the next row.
We have spent enough Sunday mornings watching kiosks go unused to find this quietly remarkable.
The friction story is the whole story. Kiosks ask people to leave their seat, stand in a small public line, and use a touchscreen that someone else just touched. QR codes are better, but a guest still has to open the camera app, frame the code, and tap a notification. An NFC puck skips all of it. Hold the phone near the disc, the giving page opens, the wallet takes over. Three taps from idea to finished gift.
The numbers we are seeing from vendors line up with what we see in the building. NFC givers skew first-time. The barrier is low enough that someone who would never have downloaded a church app will still give once, in the moment, when the message hits.
A few things matter if you are considering this:
The pucks themselves are cheap — usually $5 to $15 each — but the giving page they point to has to be fast, mobile-first, and on your own domain. A slow or off-brand redirect kills the moment. Test it on the oldest iPhone your congregation is likely to carry.
Place them where giving already happens. Pew racks, welcome desk, prayer wall, missions board. Not just the lobby. The 2026 data is clear that giving moments are scattered through the service, not concentrated at one table.
Keep cash and check options visible. The goal is to remove friction for people who already prefer their phone, not to make anyone feel out of place.
We help churches think through giving stacks like this one — what to keep, what to retire, and how to design the page on the other side of the tap so the moment actually closes. If you are weighing a kiosk replacement or a fresh giving rollout this fall, we would love to talk it through. Reach out here.