How it works

ThusaFund charges nothing. No platform fee on donations, no fee to withdraw, no monthly cost. We do not take a percentage of what you raise.

The only deduction is PayFast’s own charge, passed through exactly as they bill it. We do not mark it up and we take nothing from it.

PayFast charges a different rate depending on how someone pays — card, instant EFT, and each other method costs a different amount, and the donor chooses that on PayFast’s own page after leaving ours.

So we do not show a figure we would only be guessing at. The exact charge is retrieved from the transaction once it settles and published on the donor’s receipt and on the campaign’s public ledger — the real number, not an estimate that quietly turns out to be wrong.

At checkout we ask donors to add something for ThusaFund. It is a slider, it starts at 5%, and the donor can move it anywhere — including to zero, which takes one drag or one tap on “No thanks”.

We are telling you it starts at 5% because that is the sort of thing platforms usually leave you to discover. It is shown in rands on the screen, it is labelled as support rather than a fee, and nothing about a campaign changes if every donor sets it to zero.

Once a donation is made it is not returned. Be sure before you give.

There is one exception, and it is not a refund. If we terminate a campaign because it was fraudulent, your money is not lost and it is not kept by us. You choose another campaign to receive it, or you can ask us to choose one on your behalf.

There is no deadline on that choice and no point at which unclaimed money becomes ours. It waits until you decide. That is enforced in our database, not just promised here — the status a forfeited donation would need simply does not exist.

Every rand that leaves a campaign is published as an itemised line: the date, what it paid for, who it was paid to, and the amount — with the receipt attached.

Anyone can read it. No account, no login, no “donors only” wall. A sceptical relative, a journalist, or someone deciding whether to give can check for themselves.

Each campaign shows a live figure: of the money actually paid out so far, how much has a receipt against it. An organiser who has been paid nothing shows 100%, because they cannot have failed to account for money they never received.

For bigger goals, a campaign can split into stages. Each stage pays out, then the organiser uploads receipts before the next one unlocks. Those campaigns carry a Verified Spend badge.

The first stage is never gated — you need money before you can have a receipt for it.

This is always the organiser’s choice. A funeral or a medical emergency does not have time for stages, and we will never force them on anyone. That would be cruel, and it would push exactly the people who need help fastest onto a platform that treats them worse.

Staged release is also what protects donors best: money not yet released is still with us, so if the campaign turns out to be fraudulent that money goes to a cause the donors choose rather than disappearing.

When you request a payout, we show you the date it will arrive. A real date, on your dashboard — not “under review”. We aim to release within 48 hours, and withdrawing costs nothing.

If something genuinely needs checking, we can place a hold. Every hold must say what the problem is, what you need to do about it, and the date it clears. If we have not reviewed it by that date, the hold clears automatically and you get paid. Our slowness is our problem, not yours.

We are a South African company. We are not a bank, not a registered charity, and not affiliated with SARS. We do not issue tax certificates on behalf of organisers, and a donation through ThusaFund is not automatically tax deductible — that depends on the recipient’s own registration status.