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What are the credit card processing fees & who covers them?
What are the credit card processing fees & who covers them?

Learn about the credit card fees and the options you have.

Whit Hunter avatar
Written by Whit Hunter
Updated over a week ago

Table of contents:


What are the credit card processing fees?

BetterWorld takes no fees or any cut. We want you to keep 100% of what you raise.

Our payment processor, Stripe, takes 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.

Of note: over 90% of donors cover the credit card costs for you on our platform. Essentially they're prompted to make a small additional donation so that your organization gets the full intended amount. For example, a donor making a $100 gift would actually make a donation for ~$103, so that net of credit card fees, your organization receives $100 in your bank account.


Who covers the credit card fees?

By default, we give your donors the option to cover the transaction fee, but the organization covers the fee if the donor chooses not to cover it.

For example, if a donor gives you $100, you would receive $96.80 ($100 - 2.9% + 30 cents). That said, most donors choose to cover the credit card cost so that you can receive 100% of their donation. In practice, this means the donor would actually increase their contribution to $103, the net of the 2.9%+30 cents fee, and you would receive 100% of the original, intended, donation amount.

The good news is that 95% of donors cover these credit card transaction costs, which leads to an effective credit card rate of 0.28%!

Of note, you also have the option to choose whether you want to allow donors to optionally cover the transaction fees (and platform fees if you are on the Flex or Partner Plan), whether you want to mandate it, or whether you want to hide the option entirely.

You can change this setting within the Membership Plan section of your dashboard.


Why is the transaction cost prompt sometimes a few cents more than 2.9% + $0.30?

Stripe, our payment processor, charges 2.9% + $0.30 on transactions. When donors are prompted to cover this, the prompt is to cover the cost so that the organization receives 100% of your donation. Sometimes, the amount that’s presented to the donor is a few cents more than 2.9% + $0.30 ... but here’s why:

Take a $100 donation:

$100 * 2.9% + $0.30 = $103.20

But, if you process a transaction for $103.20, the payment processor is going to take 2.9% of $103.20 (not 2.9% of $100) ... less $0.30. In that instance, the amount the organization would be left with would actually be $99.91, not $100.

In order to fulfill that donor wish of 'covering transaction costs so that 100% goes to the

organization’, the math behind the scenes is $100/(1-2.9%) + 0.30 = 103.30.

This is why on a $100 donation, we prompt donors for $3.30 instead of $3.20 ... so that once the payment processor takes their 2.9% + $0.30, the organization receives the full

$100 the donor intended to give.

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