So you want to know about Credit Card Processing.. Here is a little overview of how our Chance2Win works. Your raffle website is created and hosted by us but is technically the Charity’s website. The charity raffle is created on the site and then you begin “sell” tickets to your audience. When a contribution/ ticket purchase is made that payment is processed directly with the Charity/Non-Profit Organization’s Merchant Account (Credit Card Processor). Technically the payment is processed via the Payment Gateway. Fun Fact:: It is actually illegal for Chance2Win to process those payments due to the regulatory nature of fundraising raffles and gambling laws.

So, in order to host a Charity Raffle with Chance2Win.org, the Charity must have a compatible Credit Card Gateway. Many of our customers have used companies like Stripe and Square. Both are payment gateways and merchant accounts so it is an easy one stop shop. Their rates tend to be around 2.9% and 30 cents a transaction, currently. Both companies offer a quick turnaround and they will process payments and make deposits into your bank account within a few business days.

For larger scale transactions, it makes sense to have a regular Merchant Account. Almost every bank has a Merchant account option and they will link to that account to a common Payment Gateway. Companies such as Chase, Bank of America, First Data, Heartland, etc., have Merchant Accounts and they link to products like  for online payments.

Intuit  is also a large scale Merchant Account processor. It is important to note that if you have Quickbooks Payments – that is not the same and Quickbooks payments does not have a compatible online gateway.

Recap: If you are hosting a charity raffle and expect to generate $10,000 - $25,000 in donations and need a Merchant Account, we would suggest signing up with Square or Stripe. You can get your account set up in minutes and they have very reasonable rates.
If you are expecting to raise over $25,000 then you might look at a more traditional Merchant Account with much better rates, but have minimum requirements for transaction volume, etc. We highly recommend WinStar Payments, they have a variety of options and excellent customer service. Contact them at https://www.winstarpayments.com/contact-us/

Here are some common questions we get:

We did a fundraiser on Gofundme and they didn't require a CC account, they simply sent us the money - we want you to do that for our raffle.

We cannot do that. A fundraiser and a raffle/charity raffles have different regulations. In almost every Jurisdiction in the US there are specific rules regarding payments for a raffle ticket. In some States, the Charity is required to have a separate bank account where the payments are deposited to avoid the possibility of co-mingling of raffle funds. It is your and the charity’s responsibility to follow the regulations for your location.

We use PayPal and want to use that for our raffle.

PayPal lists Charitable Raffles as an expressly prohibited transaction in their Terms and Conditions. While we get asked to make an exception and do it anyway, we simply will not knowingly violate another company’s TOC. You can open a Square account in the time it takes to argue with us about why we will not make an exception 🙂