Our Fees, Explained
Last updated September 1, 2026
GiftYourGiftCard exists to turn trapped change, the small balances left sitting unused on old gift cards, into real support for a cause you care about. Getting that money there safely runs through two partners: Stripe processes your card charge, and Pledge disburses the donation to your chosen charity. Both charge real fees for that work, fees we don't set and can't waive. Our own fee is the third and final piece, and it's the same for every donation.
Three fees, every donation, no tiers
- Stripe: 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. Stripe's standard published card rate, charged on the full amount. This is the only fee with a fixed part, and it's the reason small donations carry a bigger share to fees than large ones: $0.30 barely registers on a $100 gift, but on a $1 gift it's nearly a third before anything else happens.
- Pledge: 5% of what the charity receives. Pledge's fee for verifying the nonprofit, delivering the money, and issuing the official tax receipt.
- GiftYourGiftCard: 5% of what the charity receives. Our fee for building and running the platform: checking a card's balance, the charity directory, the receipts, the support, and the Stripe and Pledge integrations that turn a leftover balance into a donation in one step. Like Pledge's fee, it's a percentage of what the charity receives, taken after Stripe's cut rather than off the top, so on a small gift it shrinks along with everything else. If our rate ever changes, this page changes first, and the date at the top moves with it.
Everything left after those three is what the charity receives.
Where every dollar goes
Here's the actual math behind six example donations, starting at our $0.50 minimum, exactly how it's calculated for every donation on the platform. The four columns always add up to the amount charged. Both 5% lines are rounded to the nearest cent, and whatever is left after the three fees goes to the charity.
| Donation | Stripe (2.9% + $0.30) | Pledge (5%) | GiftYourGiftCard (5%) | To charity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $0.50 | $0.31 | $0.01 | $0.01 | $0.17 (34%) |
| $1.00 | $0.33 | $0.03 | $0.03 | $0.61 (61%) |
| $5.00 | $0.45 | $0.21 | $0.21 | $4.13 (83%) |
| $20.00 | $0.88 | $0.87 | $0.87 | $17.38 (87%) |
| $100.00 | $3.20 | $4.40 | $4.40 | $88.00 (88%) |
| $1000.00 | $29.30 | $44.12 | $44.12 | $882.46 (88%) |
What our fee adds up to
Because our 5% comes out of the charity's share rather than the full charge, it works out to a little under 5% of what you pay, and less on small gifts, where Stripe's fixed fee takes most of what's available: on a $1 donation, our fee is $0.03. It's the only thing we take from a donation, and it's what pays for running GiftYourGiftCard.
The $0.50 minimum, and where we're headed
Our mission is to unlock trapped change of any size, not just the amounts that happen to be convenient to process. $0.50 isn't a line we drew: it's Stripe's own minimum charge for a US dollar transaction, a hard limit in their payment system, and anything smaller is rejected before it can be processed at all. We sit exactly at that limit, not a cent above it. We're actively working with both Stripe and Pledge to bring their costs down so that floor can come down too. When it does, this page will be the first place it shows up.