Passing on Fees to the Bidder, Donor or Purchaser

To enable this feature, from your auction settings, go to the FINANCIAL tab.  From there, you can click the option “Prompt Purchaser to Cover CC Fees”.   This feature exists for Peer to Peer fundraisers, Events, and Auctions.  

When you enable this feature, it will prompt the user at checkout if they want to cover the CC fees.  The user will need to opt-in (click the checkbox to add the fee) to cover the fees and their total will be updated.  

Please Note: You must have ‘Enable Credit Card Processing through Handbid’ checked to allow this feature. 

Allowing users to Opt-Out

Want to add the CC fee automatically and allow users to opt-out instead (e.g. disable the option to cover the fees)?  Simply check Enable this by default? box.

When enabled, CC fees will be added to the bidder’s invoice with an option to ‘opt-out’ or deselect the statement “I would like to cover the transaction fees so 100% of my donations goes to Acme Foundation.”

This option also exists within the Handbid mobile apps as well as in the auction manager at checkout. 

Why pre-check the box

Donors cover the fee far more often when the box is already checked. Across Handbid events from September 2024 to September 2026:

Checkout setting	Events	Card checkouts	Checkouts where the donor covered the fee	Share of fee dollars covered	Median event
Box pre-checked (Enable this by default? on)	1,172	95,070	84%	75%	88%
Box unchecked (donors opt in)	879	72,339	56%	50%	58%

Half of the pre-checked events saw between 74% and 94% of donors cover the fee. Half of the opt-in events saw between 44% and 68%.

What that means in dollars: say your event runs up $3,600 in card processing fees. With the box pre-checked, donors cover about $2,700 of it. With the box unchecked, they cover about $1,800. That leaves roughly $900 more for your mission, from one setting.

Guests can still uncheck the box at checkout. Nobody is forced to pay the fee.

How these numbers were measured

The figures include every paid card and Apple Pay checkout on Handbid from September 2024 through September 2026, excluding test events. One checkout is one payment, which can include several items, tickets, or donations. The median event counts only events with 20 or more card checkouts. This compares events that chose each setting, so it is not a controlled experiment, and organizations that pre-check the box may differ in other ways.