# Support
source: https://developer.mastercard.com/donations/documentation/support/index.md

## FAQs {#faqs}

### General {#general}

Mastercard Donate is a service that enables cardholders to donate to the causes they care about most. The Donate API enables you to integrate donation capabilities thereby enabling cardholders to donate to the causes and charities they care about most. By integrating with our services you can design and launch a customized donation program tailored to your organization's unique goals. We support many top global charities. However, you can determine which charities you wish to support with your donations program. You can then work with us to onboard the charities of your choice.

### Onboarding {#onboarding}

The Mastercard Donate Team will onboard specific charity of your choice during the Implementation project.

The local legislation must recognize the charity you want to onboard to Mastercard Donate as a non-profit organization. For example, in the United States, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) must recognize the charities as a 501(c)(3) organization.

The Mastercard Donate team reserves the right to select and onboard organizations on the basis of international laws governing:

* Due Diligence
* Sanction Screening
* Counter-Terrorism Financing
* Anti-Money Laundering (AML)
No, Mastercard Donate Service does not earn any fees from the donation transaction. A donor's full donation, minus any applicable standard card processing fees, is paid directly to the designated charity.

Mastercard does not act as a professional fundraiser on behalf of any charity. Instead, it provides the donations platform solely as a service to help facilitate the donation transaction between donors and charities.

This ensures that donations are handled with integrity, transparency, and in alignment with Mastercard's commitment to social impact.
The service is free to use in the sandbox and development environments with test cards and data. There is no limit on the number of test donations that you may generate.

However, when your project moves to production, live transactions will incur processing fees. Contact your Mastercard account representative to learn more.

The Mastercard Customer Implementation Services (CIS) may charge a fee to start an implementation project. Details of these charges will be communicated separately.
To test the Donate API in a sandbox environment you create a project, generate sandbox keys, and use our test data. Refer to our [Quick Start Guide](https://developer.mastercard.com/donations/documentation/quick-start-guide/index.md) guide for details.

### Donation Categories {#donation-categories}

Mastercard Donate offers the follow types of donations:

* **Micro Donation**: Micro-donations are small recurring donations that enable cardholders to easily help the organization of their choice by automatically making a donation each time they make a normal card purchase or payment transaction up to a monthly limit configured by the cardholder.

* **Roundup Donation**: Roundup donations are a form of micro-donation that turns everyday purchases into meaningful contributions.

* **Guest Donation**: Guest donations provide a fast and easy way for individuals to implement and support a cause without committing to create and maintain a donor account. It is particularly appealing appealing to donors when donating for a disaster or any other cause spontaneously.

* **One-time Donation**: With one-time donations, donors can choose to donate anytime per their convenience without having to commit continuously to a cause. They are immediate and standalone donations that happen only once, without any automatic future payments.

* **Monthly Donation**: Monthly donations are recurring donations that allow cardholders to set a fixed donation amount to contribute automatically to a selected charity each month.

For more details on donation types, refer to the [Donation Types, Schedules, and Validations](https://developer.mastercard.com/donations/documentation/donation-types/index.md) section.
Guest, one-time, and the first monthly transaction happens in real-time. Mastercard Donate processes micro and roundup donations in the subsequent month as calculations are performed based on the transactions made in the previous month by the donor.  
If a transaction cannot complete due to reasons such as, network disruptions, explicit or authorization timeouts, customers can use the **Transaction Status API** to check its status later. If the monthly donation amount -- calculated at the beginning of every month, exceeds $1, the donor's card is debited for that sum, and the charity receives the donation a few days later. Donors will see one donation per month and this will be visible around the fourth day of the month for the activity of the previous month. The donation appears on the donor's card statement as a separate transaction. From the date a donor sets up a monthly donation, the Mastercard Donate service counts the number of purchases they make with the selected card. At the end of each month, the Mastercard Donate Service calculates monthly donation amounts by multiplying the number of donations made by the micro-donation amount the donor has configured.

Therefore, it is the sum of the micro-donation intents that is valid at that moment that determines the amount of the donation. If the donation amount is below a predetermined trigger (for example, $1), Mastercard carries over the donations until the amount of the trigger is reached. Of course, the donation never exceeds the maximum capping amount the donor has configured.

### Integration {#integration}

* **Donate API**: Partners create their own donation website or app and connect to the Mastercard Donate Service using the Donate API.

* **Mastercard Hosted Co-brand sites** : If a partner does not want to build a donations experience, they can have Mastercard handle it. The donor is redirected to a Mastercard-hosted donations site by clicking a link when using the partner user services.  

  These co-branded sites offer various donation programs on behalf of partners and a seamless experience for cardholders. They combine the partner's branding with Mastercard's trusted infrastructure. Partners can use our **batch registration feature** to make it easy for cardholders to enroll.

  This approach offers less flexibility but is quick and easy to implement. To have Mastercard build a donations site for you, contact the [Mastercard Donate Team](mailto:Donate@mastercard.com).
* **Use the Donate Widget** : A Donate Widget is a hosted web page that provides the essential functionality for donors to complete a contribution, whether through a button on your website, a mobile app, or a link shared through social media.  
  To support various integration needs, Mastercard offers options such as, a Web SDK and a Donate URL.  

  While this solution simplifies the donation process significantly, it is important to note that partners do not have access to donor or cardholder information, limiting control over user data.

  For more details, refer to the [Donate Widget](https://developer.mastercard.com/donate-widget/documentation/) documentation on Mastercard Developers.

### Policy and Performance {#policy-and-performance}

While there is no throttling policy, Mastercard reserves the right to limit user requests to preserve the reliability of the system. Yes, the Donate API is payment card industry compliant. The Mastercard Donate API uses OAuth 1.0a for authentication. The average response time per endpoint is 326 ms.

## Get Help {#get-help}

### Contact us for technical support. {#contact-us-for-technical-support}