How UK charities can compare donation platform fees

12 November 2026

A donor who gives £10 through an online platform should be able to see, before typing in a card number, how much of it the charity will actually receive. That is the standard set by the Fundraising Regulator, and it applies whether the page belongs to a national charity or a village hall committee running a one-off appeal. For small volunteer-led groups choosing a payment tool, the difficulty is that fees come in several shapes, and the headline percentage rarely tells the whole story.

Why fee transparency matters for small volunteer-led charities

The Fundraising Regulator's guidance for online fundraising platforms says fees and charges must be clearly shown before donors enter financial details. That includes how each fee is calculated and how much the platform will receive. The guidance also says a platform's fees page should carry a worked example based on a £10 donation, excluding Gift Aid, so that a donor or trustee can see the arithmetic without a calculator.

There is a further expectation where a platform asks donors for an optional contribution to its own costs. The regulator says donors should be given an easy zero-fee or tip-free option. For a small charity this matters because a donor who feels nudged into paying extra may blame the charity, not the software supplier. Trustees remain answerable for the way their appeal looks to the public, even when the page is hosted elsewhere.

GOV.UK's public guidance on raising money for charity adds the practical side. Online fundraising platforms will usually transfer the money raised to the chosen charity, and donors should be told about any fees deducted before the funds are passed on. In other words, the charity is rarely the one holding the money first. Before signing up, a treasurer should know what will be deducted, when, and what the donor was told.

For volunteers with no finance background, this gives a useful test. If a platform's pricing cannot be explained in a couple of sentences and a £10 example, it is probably not ready to sit between your supporters and your bank account.

Comparing gateway fee structures charities are likely to encounter

Three suppliers show the main ways charges are built. Charities Aid Foundation's CAF Donate takes a flat slice of each gift. On one-off donations it charges 4% of the total donation including Gift Aid, with no sign-up fee and no monthly fees. For regular giving the rate is 2% of the gross donation, with a minimum charge of 20p per donation and a separate Direct Debit setup fee.

GiveTap works differently. Its Flexi plan charges a 2.5% + VAT platform fee with no monthly cost. Its Plus plan costs £29.99 + VAT a month on top of the same 2.5% + VAT platform fee. GiveTap's pricing page also lists card-processing charges: Stripe at 1.5% + 20p online and Square at 1.4% + 25p online. These sit alongside the platform fee, so the charity is dealing with two layers of cost.

Swiftaid is a third model, because its charges attach to Gift Aid rather than to the donation itself. Its Gift Aid claim submission service costs 5% + VAT of Gift Aid processed, and its Gift Aid Finder costs 10% + VAT of Gift Aid found. Swiftaid's pricing also offers a free allowance of up to £6,000 of Gift Aid processed per tax year, with plans that then charge 5% or 2.5% plus VAT depending on subscription level.

So a "flat percentage" tool, a "platform plus processor" tool and a "Gift Aid service" tool are not like-for-like. A charity may end up using more than one of them together, and the costs then add up.

Evaluating gateway transaction fees and settlement timelines

The sensible unit of comparison is the cost of a typical donation, not the advertised rate. Take a £10 gift. As with consulting a casino games and payment guide, reviewing the underlying deductions is revealing: on CAF Donate's one-off rate, 4% comes to 40p if no Gift Aid is claimed. If the donor is a taxpayer and Gift Aid lifts the total to £12.50, the same 4% is taken from the larger figure and comes to 50p. A regular £10 gift at 2% would come to 20p, which happens to equal the 20p minimum, though the Direct Debit setup fee is a separate matter.

On GiveTap's Flexi plan the platform fee is 25p plus VAT on £10. Add Stripe's 1.5% + 20p and the processing charge is 35p; with Square's 1.4% + 25p it is 39p. The total therefore runs to about 60p plus VAT on the platform element with Stripe, or about 64p with Square. A fixed 20p or 25p component bites hardest on small gifts, which matters if most of your donations are £5 or £10 collected at events.

Monthly charges change the picture again. A £29.99 + VAT monthly plan only makes sense if it saves more than it costs, and a charity raising a few hundred pounds a year is unlikely to see that. Gift Aid charges are different once more: Swiftaid's percentage applies to the Gift Aid reclaimed, not the donation, so on a £10 gift that generates £2.50 of Gift Aid, a 5% charge is about 12.5p plus VAT, and nothing at all while the charity stays within the free allowance.

Timing deserves its own line in any comparison. GOV.UK's guidance says platforms will usually pass money on to the charity, but when and how is for the supplier to spell out. When assessing transfer speeds and mobile wallet settlement windows across different payment processors, trustees can consult digital checkout overviews and merchant payment guides to see how various merchant gateways handle instant e-wallet payouts. Whatever sources you use, ask each supplier in writing how long funds take to reach your account and whether any amount is held back, then check that against your own cash-flow needs for things like venue deposits or emergency purchases.

What to check before choosing a payment tool

Start with disclosure. Open the supplier's fees page and look for the worked £10 example, excluding Gift Aid, that the Fundraising Regulator expects. Check that fees are shown to donors before they enter payment details, and that the page explains how each charge is calculated and how much the platform receives. If any of that is missing, ask why before you go further.

Next, establish who pays what. Find out whether Gift Aid is handled by the platform, by a separate service such as Swiftaid, or by the charity itself, and whether the fee is taken from the gift or from the Gift Aid. Note whether the percentage is calculated on the gross figure including Gift Aid, as with CAF Donate's one-off rate, because that raises the cost of each gift. Look for monthly charges, and work out how many donations a month it would take for a subscription to pay for itself.

Then look at the layers underneath. Card-processing charges, such as the Stripe and Square figures GiveTap lists, may be separate from the platform fee. Setup fees matter too, particularly for Direct Debit, where CAF Donate applies a separate charge on top of its 2% rate. Where a platform offers donors the chance to cover or add to fees, confirm there is an easy option to decline, as the regulator's guidance requires for optional charges.

Finally, confirm how the money reaches you. GOV.UK says platforms usually transfer funds to the chosen charity and that donors should be told about deductions first. Ask what the statement or payout report looks like, because a treasurer reconciling accounts for an annual return will need to match each deduction to a donation. Keep a copy of the pricing page on the date you sign up; fee schedules change, and your records should show what you agreed to.

A simple comparison table for small charities

The table below puts the three models side by side using the suppliers' published figures. It is a guide to structure, not a quote, and VAT applies where stated.

On a £10 gift with no Gift Aid, CAF Donate's one-off charge is 40p, while GiveTap's Flexi plan with Stripe comes to roughly 60p plus VAT on the platform fee. Swiftaid sits in a different place because it charges on the Gift Aid, not the gift, so it is better seen as an add-on than a rival. Before you commit, run your own typical donation through each model, once with Gift Aid and once without, and pick the one whose total you can explain to a donor in a sentence.