Tap to donate at charity events: contactless giving options compared

And cash has mostly left the room. UK Finance’s latest payments report shows cash was 8% of all UK payments in 2025, while contactless cards made up 39%.

I built a fundraising platform myself, so I read payment providers’ price lists more closely than is probably healthy. Every fee below is as each provider’s own page showed it in October 2026. For a terminal at the raffle desk, the card readers page compares the four that plug into the platform.

What is tap to donate?

Tap to donate is any setup where a donor gives by tapping a contactless card or phone, usually for a preset amount, with no form to fill in. The gift settles to the charity’s account, less the provider’s fee.

The preset amount is the point. £5, £10 or £20 is a second’s decision, which is why it works in a doorway and struggles with anything bigger.

There is a ceiling, too. From March 2026 the FCA lets banks with strong fraud controls set their own contactless limits, but it expects most to keep the ones they have. A large gift will often still need a PIN.

Which tap donate options work at a charity event?

Four tap donate options are worth a look, each for a different moment.

1. A contactless donation box. A branded device on a stand or counter, set to fixed amounts. GoodBox is one UK maker, with devices to buy, lease or hire. It suits a reception desk nobody is staffing.
2. A phone app. Software that turns a volunteer’s phone into the reader, such as Give as you Live‘s Tap to Donate. Good for roaming volunteers.
3. A card machine for charity. An ordinary reader from SumUp, Zettle or Stripe. Cheapest per tap, but built for shops, so somebody types the amount in.
4. A QR code to a donation page. The guest’s own phone does the tapping, with Apple Pay or Google Pay. Only this option can collect a name and address with the gift.

What do contactless donation providers charge?

Contactless donation fees in October 2026 run from 1.4% plus 10p on a card machine to 5% or more per gift on some donation services. This is what each provider’s own page shows:

On a £20 tap, that is about 34p on SumUp, 35p on Zettle, 38p on Stripe Terminal with a reader (48p with Tap to Pay), 42p on GoodBox and £1 at 5%. Give as you Live lists two percentages against Tap to Donate, so ask how they combine on one gift.

A QR code to a donation page on the charity’s own Stripe account pays the online rate: 1.5% plus 20p on standard UK cards, or 50p on £20.

Can you claim Gift Aid on a tap donate gift?

Not ordinary Gift Aid, unless the donor also makes a declaration. A tap tells you an amount and a time, not a name or home address, and HMRC says a Gift Aid declaration needs both.

What a tap can earn is a top-up under the Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme. HMRC’s GASDS guidance lets a charity claim on cash and contactless donations of £30 or less, with no declarations and no need to know who gave. The rules that matter:

• Each donation must be £30 or less. You cannot claim on a £30 portion of a larger gift.
• The top-up is worked out like Gift Aid: £7.50 on a £30 gift, up to £2,000 a year on £8,000 of small donations.
• Small donations cannot exceed 10 times your Gift Aid donations, and you must claim Gift Aid in the same tax year.
• A gift with a valid Gift Aid declaration cannot go in the GASDS claim too.
• Keep the records the contactless terminal produces, for six years.

HMRC’s example is a contactless credit or debit card, so if your device takes phone payments too, check with your accountant. This is general guidance, not tax advice.

Here is where preset amounts earn their place. A box set to £5, £10 and £20 produces records in which no gift is over £30, which is what HMRC asks you to show. A custom screen that lets a guest tap £50 takes that gift outside the scheme, and without a declaration it carries no Gift Aid either.

Is a SumUp card machine enough for charity donations?

For a raffle table or a bucket, yes. SumUp is the cheapest per tap here, at 1.69% with no monthly fee. It is a card reader, though, not a donation box.

SumUp’s own charity page says as much. Its readers take the payment, and the donation screens come from partner apps: Give A Little offers up to six donation values and a custom amount with Gift Aid collection, and CollecTin and Payaz also collect Gift Aid. Check the partner’s subscription on top of SumUp’s rate.

Zettle and Stripe Terminal work the same way. The real question for a donation is whether the tap reaches the same total as everything else that happened that night.

Where tap to donate fits on a gala night

I think of a tap point as the modern bucket. It catches the fiver on the way to the cloakroom from a guest who carries no cash. That is real money, and cheap to collect.

But ten lots in a room of two hundred means ten winners, and a box by the door barely changes that. The guests who came ready to give £500 will not do it £20 at a time on a device in the corner.

That money belongs in the live pledge, run straight after the auction while paddles are still in hands. At the Jigsaw Trust, the pledge raised £30,600, more than the auction before it.

A pledge is a gift, and Gift Aid adds 25p per £1 from an eligible taxpayer who makes a declaration. So a £500 pledge reaches the cause as £625. Tap the same £500 into a box, if the card allows it, and the cause gets £500 less the fee, with no top-up.

My rule is simple. Put a tap point where people pass, keep its amounts to £30 or less, and claim the top-up. Then design the pledge as the moment the whole room gives.

Can every tap land in one total?

Yes, if the giving runs through one platform rather than three suppliers. That is how I built the Generosity Works platform.

Guests give from their own phones with one tap through Apple Pay or Google Pay. Tiered pledges capture each guest’s Gift Aid declaration as they give. At the desk, WooPayments Tap to Pay on a volunteer’s phone records each sale as an order, and lots, pledges, shop takings and cash typed in on the night all reach one figure on the big screen.

Payments settle into the charity’s own Stripe account, so the only deduction is Stripe’s fee. There is no percentage of what you raise and 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 a dedicated box wins: an unattended, branded unit on a reception desk all year round. The platform is not a box on a wall.

Do the sum before you buy a box

Take one realistic number: how many taps, at what average gift. Apply each provider’s fee, add the device, and ask where the money settles. Then ask how much of the night should come from £10 taps at all.

The generosity is already in the room. A box by the door catches a little of it. If you have a number to hit this year and want the whole evening designed to release the rest, book a discovery call. Let’s talk about your number.