Challenge

Charities are seeing their cash donations crater as contactless payments become more popular and fewer people carry cash.

Tech startup GiveTap wanted to make donating to charity as simple as buying a coffee. Its platform allows fundraisers to collect money in person at events, on the street, or even with a QR code on a collection tin.

From the outset, it used Stripe Connect to automate every aspect of handling payments, from calculating income and refunds to fraud protection and FCA regulation. “It saves us probably three members of staff,” says Chris Kane, head of new business and cofounder of GiveTap.

Before GiveTap, charities struggled to take non cash donations for several reasons: Regulations restricting spending posed an obstacle to purchasing card readers outright; the sheer number of fundraisers spread across a large region made it hard to both distribute devices and train people to use them; and – even if devices made it to the fundraising site – customers often struggled with poor signals, difficulty pairing devices, and managing multiple apps.

Solution

GiveTap solved these reliability issues by integrating Stripe Terminal. With GiveTap’s previous card reader solution, connection problems and incomplete transactions could result in lost fees for GiveTap, with 1 in 20 failing to complete. However, because Terminal is fully integrated with the GiveTap app, GiveTap now experiences a 0% loss rate, meaning no more lost fees. Working seamlessly with Stripe Connect, Terminal automatically pays GiveTap’s fee at the point of transaction, removing the need for reporting and invoicing, thereby reducing overheads.

However, it was early access to Tap to Pay on Android that gave GiveTap customers the most freedom when taking in-person payments. By allowing anyone raising funds for charity to accept contactless payments with an app, Tap to Pay effectively turns their phone or tablet into a card reader – no extra hardware required. Developers at GiveTap found Stripe documentation to be clear and straightforward – and Tap to Pay on Android easy to integrate with its app.

“The opportunity is massive,” says Kane. “Not everybody had a contactless device, and now they do. You can take donations from friends and family when you want them. You can take donations at events or anywhere else.”

Results

Since implementing Tap to Pay on Android, GiveTap has seen a huge increase in interest and sign-ups to its platform. “We signed up 200 charities last year, and more than half of those charities signed up in the last half of the year,” says Kane. “And every day we’re getting more charities asking us about Tap to Pay.”

For charities, Tap to Pay is a new channel that can be tapped to grow income; Kane estimates that it already represents 30% of in-person payments for some.

Moving to Stripe Terminal also allowed GiveTap to cut its transaction loss rate to zero and reduce operational costs significantly. Given the simplicity of the Stripe Terminal platform, the GiveTap development team can focus their efforts on new products, such as a new special events platform that allows charities to take payments while running their own silent auctions and prize draws.