[roysting]

It is not my domain, but I was quite surprised at the 10% processing fee expense. That’s ~$1M at their ~$10 income.

Isn’t that quite a bit high? Or am I looking at something incorrectly. Maybe someone has some suggestions for them on how to lower that amount.

[mywittyname]

That probably means they receive a lot of small donations. Payment processors often have a fee structure that's 2.9% + <flat fee around $0.30>. So any donation below ~$4.50 would end up having a >=10% processing fee.

There could be currency exchange rates that are factored in at the donation end as well.

I agree that 10% is high, but it's still explainable.

[LamaOfRuin]

Yeah, and those amounts are much more common when organizations are pushing for users to make their donation a monthly recurring donation resulting in much smaller transactions.

I believe they use stripe and this would also include:

- subscription billing fee (up to 0.7%)

- currency exchange fees

- chargeback fees

- processing fees on refunded transactions

[jdeibele]

https://blog.thunderbird.net/2025/10/state-of-the-bird-2024-... says that the average monthly gift is $6.25. Somebody else gave figures of 3% of the amount and .30 per transaction, which is common for credit card processing.

$6.25 * 97% =$6.06 - $.30 =$5.76 That's $.49 in processing fees and .49/6.25=0.0784 So 8% rather than 10%.

I assume donations other than monthly are more like $15 or $25 but maybe there are people who do $5 or $3 or even $1.

Add in chargebacks, etc. and 10% unfortunately seems reasonable.

I do wish there was a way to pay companies that was less expensive for them but very little friction on my end. Venmo business is 1.9% + $.10 and that's better than I was expecting but still higher than ideal. I've encountered that once. Zelle depends on the business's bank and I've never encountered it as an alternative to credit cards.

Not affiliated with Mozilla or Venmo or Zelle in any way.

[multiplegeorges]

That is very high. Not sure who they are using for processing, but I know Stripe will give registered charities a (very small) cut on their fees, I'm not sure about non-profits. But even with market rates, the average fees through Stripe would be well below 10%, IME.

[thayne]

Aren't processing fees usually 3-6%?

Although it could be higher if a lot of donations are small, and hitting the minimum transaction fees. The average could also be brought up if donations are made through the play or apple app stores, which have much higher takes.