GoodBox contactless donations: cost, features and the event alternative

I built a fundraising platform myself, so I read other people’s price lists more closely than is probably healthy. Here is what GoodBox charges according to its own pages in October 2026, where a box earns its place at an event, and where the money it cannot reach should go.

What is GoodBox?

GoodBox is a UK maker of contactless donation devices for charities, with an online portal that reports what each device has raised. The company behind it, The Good Box Co Labs Ltd, was incorporated in 2016 and is listed as active.

The GBx Flex is its portable device: up to eight hours of battery, Apple Pay, Google Pay and the major cards, its own connectivity, and taps taken with no signal at all. GoodBox pitches it at galas, venues and street fundraising.

The GoodBox Portal shows the time and value of each donation, the device it came through and where the card was issued. GoodBox says over 5,000 charities have chosen it, and describes itself as an FCA-regulated payment company.

How much does GoodBox cost?

GoodBox charges 1.59% + 10p on each UK donation, or 0% when the donor chooses to cover the fee, and signing up is free. The devices are bought, leased or hired, with prices in a brochure you download from the pricing page.

That fee is a blended rate: one number covers card processing, merchant fees and GoodBox’s own fee. It is simple to budget for. The trade-off is that you cannot see GoodBox’s share of each tap.

I ran it on three tap sizes, next to two readers that plug into the platform I built, at each provider’s UK in-person rate in October 2026. SumUp charges 1.69% per payment, and WooPayments 1.4% plus 20p.

On fees alone there is not much in it, and on taps this size GoodBox costs less than WooPayments. But the fixed 10p does most of its work on the smallest gifts: 3.6% of a £5 tap, about 2.1% of a £20 one.

Read the general terms before you sign. They list the fees an order form can carry: set-up, purchase or rental, delivery, the transaction fee, and a monthly membership fee, which the terms let rise on renewal by the higher of 3% or RPI. I would ask which apply to you, and get the answer in writing.

How do GoodBox donations reach the charity?

GoodBox donations are collected by GoodBox and paid on to the charity’s bank account with the fees already deducted. Its charity page says funds are net settled weekly.

This is the bit of the model I would look at first. With a box, the money passes through GoodBox on its way to you, while a card reader on the charity’s own account settles straight to the charity. Neither is wrong, but the box’s takings arrive as a separate weekly payment, in a separate portal, apart from the tickets, the auction and the pledge.

What do GoodBox reviews say?

GoodBox reviews are thin on the ground. On Trustpilot it holds a TrustScore of 3.8 from 15 reviews, the most recent I could see from September 2022.

Reviewers praise helpful support, easy set-up and devices that keep taking money offline. The complaints, mostly from 2020 to 2022, are about hardware: failing screens, short battery life on an older model, donations that did not upload. GoodBox replied to many of them. Fifteen reviews is not much to go on. I would ask for a reference from a charity that uses it at events like yours.

Can a GoodBox donation carry Gift Aid?

Not ordinary Gift Aid on its own. HMRC needs a Gift Aid declaration from the donor, and a tap tells the portal a time, an amount and a card’s country.

What a box can earn is a top-up under the Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme. HMRC’s GASDS rules allow claims on contactless donations of £30 or less with no declaration, up to £2,000 a year on £8,000 of small donations, capped at 10 times your Gift Aid donations. Keep the records the terminal produces.

That suits a box. GoodBox puts its average donation at £13.90, well inside the limit. Check the other conditions with your accountant, because this is general guidance and not tax advice.

Where a GoodBox fits at a gala

A box earns its place where people pass and nobody is selling: the cloakroom queue, the bar, the exit. It catches the guest who wants to give a tenner and has no cash, and it needs nobody to staff it.

The generosity is already in the room. What a box cannot reach is the money that walks in with your most generous guests. Ten lots in a room of two hundred means ten winners, and a device in the corner barely changes that. The guest ready to give £500 is not going to tap a preset £10 fifty times.

That gift belongs in the live pledge, run the moment the auction ends, while paddles are still in hands. At the Jigsaw Trust, the pledge raised £30,600, more than the auction it followed. And with a declaration, Gift Aid adds 25p per pound, so £500 reaches the cause as £625.

How do Generosity Works’ card readers and pledges compare?

They do a different job. A GoodBox is a dedicated, branded box. The Generosity Works platform puts the desk, the auction and the pledge into one total.

The platform works with four card readers, WooPayments, Square, Zettle and SumUp, and each can turn a volunteer’s phone into the terminal. With WooPayments every tap is recorded as an order, so the desk and the website produce one number. For a table selling £5 raffle strips, SumUp is cheaper and simpler.

Everything else settles into the charity’s own Stripe account, so the only deduction is Stripe’s fee. Tiered pledges capture each guest’s Gift Aid declaration as they give. No percentage, no tip prompt. The platform is free when a charity books me as auctioneer and host, my fee is the only money taken, and it is not sold on its own, as our pricing page explains.

I will say plainly where GoodBox wins. A branded box on a reception desk all year, with its own connection and nobody standing next to it, is not what the platform is. If that is the job, buy the box.

Does a card reader replace someone on the stage?

A card reader collects a gift, but it does not ask for one. At a gala someone has to make the ask, explain what the money does and give guests a reason to tap. A professional auctioneer and host does that from the stage, and the readers take the payments afterwards.

For a collection at the door, a box on its own is fine. For a gala, have the date, room size and your running order ready. It is free when a charity books me as auctioneer and host, my fee is the only money taken, and the platform is not sold on its own. You can book me at thecharityauctioneer.uk.

Do the sum before you sign

Before you order a box for an event, write down three numbers: how many taps you expect, the average gift, and the share of the night’s target those taps represent. Then add the device or hire to the fee.

For most galas, that third number is small. A box is a sensible collector at the door, not where the evening’s total gets made. If you have a number to hit this year and want the night designed around where the money really is, book a discovery call. Let’s talk about your number.