It's official! iATS Payments has approved our proposal to fund development work to upgrade the current CiviCRM iATS plugin to the new iATS Webservice: ProcessLink standard. Alan Dixon and I are trying to find time to schedule to start work on this in July/August - aiming to have it completed in Fall. We are very excited that iATS is making a significant monetary contribution to develop a free open-source tool that non-profits all around can use to conduct their missions. In addition - and as part of the proposal - we've also asked iATS to assess a typical CiviCRM/iATS plug-in install for PCI compliance standards.
What does this mean for your organization?
if you're already using iATS on the Drupal side (Drupal Commerce): this new iATS plugin will let you hook up CiviCRM to your existing iATS account. You'll continue to process products/SKUs on the Drupal side, while you can start accepting doing Donations, Memberships, other payments on the CiviCRM side.
if you're already using iATS in CiviCRM: the new iATS plugin will let you process payments more reliably - esp. recurring contributions like Donations, or automated Membership payments - and will also able to process ACH/EFT payments: direct debit
if you're already doing payments in CiviCRM: but with another processor like eg PayPal Pro or Moneris: the new plugin will give you a choice to either stay with PayPal Pro or to switch to iATS. Either way - we'll be happy to support any choice you make here. There are Pros and Cons to any payment processor - and I'd be happy to discuss these with you to help determine what may work best for your organization.
if you're not already doing payments in CiviCRM: if your timeline allows it - then I suggest you wait until this new tool is in place - before you apply for either an account with iATS or with PayPal Pro or Moneris.