Payment Processor

What it means

A payment processor is the company responsible for the technical handling of a payment transaction: authorizing the donor's card, screening for fraud, and moving funds from the donor's payment method toward the receiving program. HypeRaise uses Stripe as its payment processor for every donation made on the platform.

How it works on HypeRaise

When a donor submits a donation, the transaction runs through Stripe's infrastructure rather than through any proprietary or in-house payment system built by HypeRaise. Stripe is one of the most widely used payment processors globally, powering payments for companies across e-commerce, subscription software, and marketplace platforms, and it maintains PCI compliance, meaning card data is handled according to established industry security standards rather than stored directly on HypeRaise's own servers.

Key details

This distinction, between the fundraising platform and the payment processor underneath it, matters when administrators are answering parent questions about security. Rather than asking a family to trust an unfamiliar or purpose-built payment system, HypeRaise can point to Stripe specifically: a company with its own independent security track record, compliance certifications, and public reputation that exists entirely separate from HypeRaise's own platform.

Processing fees charged by Stripe for handling each transaction are separate from HypeRaise's own platform fee, and donors are given the option to cover these processing costs themselves through the cover-fee prompt at checkout, which increases the amount that ultimately reaches the program.