Processing Fee

What it means

A processing fee is the charge applied by Stripe, HypeRaise's payment processor, to handle the technical work of authorizing and moving funds for each individual transaction. This fee is separate and distinct from HypeRaise's own platform fee, which covers the cost of the fundraising software, reporting tools, and support rather than the payment infrastructure itself.

How it works on HypeRaise

Processing fees of this kind are standard across essentially any online payment system, not unique to HypeRaise or to fundraising specifically. Any time a donor pays with a credit or debit card online, whether at a retail store's website or a fundraising campaign page, a similar processing fee applies somewhere in the transaction chain to cover the cost of card networks, fraud screening, and payment authorization.

Key details

Because processing fees and platform fees are both deducted from a donation before it reaches a program's net proceeds, understanding the difference between the two matters when explaining the full fee picture to boosters, parents, or school leadership. A program that can clearly articulate which portion covers card processing and which covers the fundraising platform tends to field fewer confused questions than one that lumps everything into a single, unexplained deduction.

Donors have the option to cover both the processing fee and platform fee themselves through the cover-fee prompt at checkout, which increases the amount that ultimately reaches the program if the donor chooses to accept it.