We’re giving donors more choice

One of the guiding principles of Chuffed.org has always been transparency. Our model is built off ‘optional donations‘ because we wanted to make the costs associated with donating online transparent to donors.

We also wanted to make the fact that our payment processors charged fees transparent as well, so we added them to the donation page.

This week, we’re releasing a significant change to our payment processing to make the payment processing fees more transparent – and reflective of the differing fees for different payment types.

Generally speaking, it’s cheaper to process Visa/Mastercards, than it is to process American Express Cards, than it is to process PayPal transactions.

Previously, to make the donation flow simpler, we used a weighted-average blending method to charge an average rate. This is no longer possible to do due to regulation changes in Australia and the EU – we think that North America and the rest of the world will follow.

The good news is that donors who were thinking about using an American Express or PayPal can now reduce their payment processing fees by using a Visa or Mastercard.

This will generally mean that the overall payment processing fees donors will pay on average will go down. It also means that when we negotiate lower rates with our card processing partners, we can pass on individual card rates to you.

PS, we recently renegotiated our rates with Stripe, so you’ll be seeing even cheaper card processing rates with this rollout. Here’s what they look like for four major countries:

United States

  • Domestic Visa/Mastercard: 2.2% + 30c
  • Amex/International: 3.5% +30c
  • PayPal: 2.9% + 30c

Australia

  • Domestic Visa/Mastercard: 0.8% + 20c
  • Domestic American Express: 1.8% + 20c
  • International Visa/Mastercard/Amex: 2.8% + 20c
  • PayPal: 2.6% + 30c

United Kingdom

  • Domestic and EU Visa/ Mastercard: 1.2% + 20p
  • Amex/ Non-EU: 2.9% + 20p
  • PayPal: 3.4% + 20p

Canada

  • All payment types: 2.9% + 30c