Software/Payments
Your Stripe keys. Your account. Your money.
We never hold your donors’ money, which means we cannot take anything out of it. That is not a policy — it is the architecture.
Where the money actually goes
Many event platforms route guest payments through their merchant account and pass the money on later, with a fee taken on the way past — on top of what the card processor already charges. On a six-figure evening, a couple of percent is real money, and it is money your guests believed they were giving to the cause.
Here, you enter your own Stripe keys. Every payment settles directly into the charity’s own account, under the charity’s own control, in the charity’s own Stripe dashboard.
The only deduction is Stripe’s own card-processing fee, which every platform pays and which goes to Stripe rather than to us — straight from your own account. Your donors are never shown a tip prompt.
It is the same argument this whole business is built on: every middleman between a donor’s intention and a charity’s bank account costs the charity something.
Taking the money before people leave
A card on file, held not charged
Guests add a card before they bid, exactly as a hotel or a car hire firm takes one — normal and expected, not unusual. Placing a bid never charges anything. A card is only ever actually charged if and when that guest wins a lot.
Automatic payment on winning
The moment a lot closes, the winner is charged. Nobody is chased afterwards, nobody queues at a desk at the end of the night, and nobody goes home owing money they fully intended to pay on Monday.
One tap with Apple Pay or Google Pay
Guests add your event to their phone’s home screen and it opens full-screen with its own icon. That unlocks the wallet payment sheet: one tap and a fingerprint, instead of typing a sixteen-digit card number in a dark room after three glasses of wine.
Refunds, holds and collection
Pre-authorisation at bid time, refunds handled properly when a lot falls through, and lot collection tracked so you know what has actually left the building.
Fee cover, offered honestly
Guests can choose to cover the card processing cost so the charity receives the full amount. It is offered, never assumed — and unlike a platform tipping prompt, every penny of it goes to your charity rather than to us.
The questions worth asking any supplier
Take these to everyone you are considering, us included:
- Whose merchant account do our guests’ payments land in?
- What do you add on top of the card processor’s own fee?
- Do you show our donors a tip or platform-support prompt, and is it off by default?
- On a £60,000 evening, what does the charity actually bank?
No commission. Not now, not at any level.
Let’s talk about your number.
What your guests give, your charity keeps.
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