In 2024, Americans sent an astonishing $592.5 billion to nonprofits, the second-highest total on record and a 3.3% jump from the year before. Yet, most of that money never touches a payment processor’s rails – it diverts into PayPal Giving Fund buttons, custom DAF portals, and niche fundraising apps while core processors quietly watch both traffic and revenue slip away.
Walk through a modern merchant stack and you’ll find a split personality:
That donation lane is effectively a side road: settlements occur outside your reconciliation tools, data hides in other dashboards, and fee revenue goes to someone else.
Change’s own market research shows that donation flows can add up to 3-5% of a retailer’s annual charge volume – often more during seasonal campaigns. That’s volume that processors are letting slip away today.
Payment processors have the engineering muscle to move money, but charitable dollars come with regulatory baggage.
The state of California, thanks to AB 488, requires every online fundraising platform to register with the Attorney General, track each charitable transaction, and file annual reports beginning with activity from June 12 2024 forward.3 Similar regimes exist or are emerging in other states. This adds
Donations must be segregated, often routed first to a donor-advised fund (DAF) before any commercial fees or revenue share can be taken.
Each gift needs an IRS-compliant acknowledgment, OFAC screening of both donor and recipient, and ongoing charity-good-standing monitoring.
Tracking cost basis, reversals, and multi-step disbursements strains finance teams already busy reconciling core payment flows.
Standing up bespoke donations infrastructure means new legal entities, bond postings, state filings, and months of valuable engineering time.
Change plugs into existing payment rails, then settles every charitable dollar straight into Our Change Foundation, Change’s partner DAF. Processors inherit an instant donation product without the heavy lift. Here’s what payment processors can enjoy when they use Change:
Processors that serve consumer commerce stand to gain most because retail and food-service merchants run high-frequency campaigns. But corporate card, wallet, and BNPL providers can capture the same upside by converting loyalty points or cash-back balances into seamless charity gifts.
Your merchants already inspire generosity. Right now, that generosity escapes to third-party tools, leaving your platform with lower TPV, thinner data, and none of the feel-good brand lift.
By embedding Change’s direct-to-DAF engine, payment processors can ship a fully compliant donations product in weeks, reclaim the charitable volume they’re missing, and unlock fresh revenue… no new entities, no extra audits, no distractions from core payments.
Turn every checkout into a chance to give, and make sure the dollars flow through your rails next time.
Works Cited