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Love this project and really appreciate the scientific, impact-focused approach you’re taking. Excited to share GoodWallet with friends and family. This feels like a simple but powerful way to make everyday actions more meaningful.

Patrick Mayerhofer 🔸Jul 12

Thanks Johannes! We really appreciate any help with spreading the word :)

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GoodWallet: turning everyday repayments into high-impact donations

by Patrick Mayerhofer 🔸

Jul 14 min read 24

54

Effective givingOpportunities to take actionAnnouncements and updatesCommunity infrastructureEntrepreneurship

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GoodWallet: turning everyday repayments into high-impact donations

TL;DR

1. What GoodWallet does today / our vision for tomorrow

2. The (surprisingly big) friction problem

The problem

How does GoodWalllet help?

3. The mental budgeting and commitment problem

The problem

How does GoodWallet help?

4. Road-map & open questions

5. How you can help

Closing - Some personal words

24 comments

TL;DR

GoodWallet is a digital wallet that lets you redirect your own and your friends’ money towards effective charities. By streamlining and socializing the giving process, we aim to unlock new, counterfactual donations within the EA community. Additionally, by making effective giving the default, we hope to expose non-EA friends to impact-per-€ cues, exporting the idea of effective giving far beyond EA’s borders. Eventually, we hope that saying “just pay me back via GoodWallet” will be as common as splitting with Revolut/Paypal/Venmo/Monzo.

We’re fully online and need your feedback, brutal critique, and help to spread the word. Here, I wanted to walk you through our thought process, tell you the vision, and what is implemented and what isn’t. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Big thanks to Antilia Virginie for her help in writing this article. Antilia is currently pursuing a PhD at Oxford, focusing on the behavioural determinants of effective giving.

Sign-up to the GoodWallet here: thegoodwallet.org

Related reading: A well-received EA Forum post, Small simple way to promote effective giving while making people feel good (Aug 2024), describes how redirecting small debts—friends repaying expenses, casual buyers on online marketplaces—toward charities sparks joy, reduces social friction, and spreads the idea through word-of-mouth.

1. What GoodWallet does today / our vision for tomorrow

The GoodWallet is live and has the following capabilities:

Personal link / QR. Anyone can send money into your GoodWallet through your personal wallet link; money lands either in your wallet or (if you pre-select) goes directly to your chosen charity.
Gift-card. Pre-load €X, send the link; recipients redeem and often go on to create their own wallet. Gift-card autonomy measurably boosts follow-on giving (Mulder and Joireman, 2016).
Fee policy. We charge 0% and cover all processing fees.
Impact defaults. EA-aligned donation options (GiveWell, EA Funds).

Our vision for the GoodWallet:

Single place to manage all charitable donations. We are planning on adding any registered charity and make the GoodWallet a single place to track all charitable activities.
A public API for anyone to integrate GoodWallet. We aim to make charitable giving an alternative payment method that anyone can integrate into their platforms. For example, a marketplace or a bill-splitting app could directly include GoodWallet payments as an option.

2. The (surprisingly big) friction problem

The problem

Giving online requires significant time and effort: typically, it involves seeking websites, scrolling through multiple pages and painstakingly filling out credit card forms. Behavioral studies have shown that high cognitive or time effort reduce prosocial behavior, including charitable giving (Greene et al., 2008; Xu et al., 2012; Achtziger et al., 2016).

It is therefore not surprising that removing tiny frictions boosts giving. In a workplace field experiment, switching to a one-click giving system increased participation rates by at least 50% (Hutchinson-Quillian et al., 2021). Yet common money transfers (i.e., paying back €10 for beers or sending a small birthday gift) rarely offer a one-click path to high-impact charities.

How does GoodWalllet help?

Convenience: it takes just a few clicks to transfer funds into someone’s GoodWallet and to effective non-profits. We also have an option that directs all funds that flow into one’s GoodWallet directly to a default charity they set. Additionally, the platform makes use of recent trends in payments for charitable giving: one quarter of Gen Z donors say that digital wallets are their preferred method for donating (Bloomerang, 2024), and recipients of charity gift cards are significantly more likely to make follow-up donations (Mulder & Joireman 2016). This indicates that GoodWallet gift cards can seed lasting donor behaviour.

We will soon also include one-click solutions like Apple Pay and Google pay during the payment process.

3. The mental budgeting and commitment problem

The problem

There is never a “right budget” or a “right time” for spontaneous giving.

Compared to regular expenses like housing or groceries, charitable giving rarely has a dedicated “mental budget” in most people’s minds. Instead, studies show that people are more willing to give and give more when donations feel irregular or exceptional (Sussman et al., 2015).

Additionally, a lot of people feel motivated to give after a direct solicitation (Andreoni and Rao, 2011), but follow through requires commitment. A recent study found that only 23% of people who had promised to donate to charity at a later date actually followed through with a donation (Fosgaard and Soetevent, 2022).

How does GoodWallet help?

By helping people convert irregular monetary interactions (like IOUs or thank-you gestures) into charitable donations, GoodWallet turns giving into a substitute for a social repayment, not a deduction from a fixed budget. Furthermore, when funds are deposited into a GoodWallet, they stay in a donor‑advised‑fund‑like pot until the owner donates them (unless the user has a charity pre-selected). This tackles the commitment problem by reducing the temptation to renege on making a charitable donation.

4. Road-map & open questions

Next 60 days. More seamless payment processing e.g. by integrating Apple/Google Pay; charity-search refactor and grow the GoodWallet community from just over 100 to >500 users.
Unknowns. What are the most useful use-cases for EA and non-EA users to raise donations in social settings? Gift cards? Sharing the link and QR code on professional and social platforms for others to donate into others’ GoodWallets? Let us know your thoughts.

5. How you can help

2 minutes: Create a wallet, send yourself or a friend (through the gift card feature) a €10 donation, donate to your favourite charity, and report any issues.
→ thegoodwallet.org
5 minutes: Share your critiques of our choice architecture in the comments.
Further: Use the GoodWallet with your friends. Send them a Gift Card for their birthday, share your GoodWallet link on your professional social pages for others to donate into it, and let us know about any applications that you found for increasing impact through the GoodWallet.

Closing - Some personal words

Ben and I started GoodWallet because we believe charitable giving should feel as natural as any other everyday payment. What began as a passion project for us and our friends has now grown into something that other people outside of our immediate community are using. By working closely with people like you, we aim to turn GoodWallet into a next-generation digital impact wallet that removes friction and channels far more money to high-impact causes.

Patrick Mayerhofer
Co-founder, GoodWallet

(Thanks to everyone who already tested the MVP and shared real-world use cases – your stories shaped the roadmap.)

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15Seeking feedback on Good Wallet – the “Buy Me a Coffee” for charitable giving (5‑min survey inside)

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Romain Barbe🔸Jul 19

Has this concept been attempted in the past, especially considering that it could be a for-profit venture (e.g., a company taking a 5% commission)? If it has been tried and failed, what were the reasons for its failure? If it hasn't been attempted, what are the barriers preventing it from being pursued?

I find this project promising and I'm quite enthusiastic about it, but a part of me wonders why it hasn't been done already. We don't need to specifically promote effective charities for this project to succeed, what are the reasons this hasn't been done successfully in the past?

Ian TurnerJul 13

Indeed, I think a contrast with existing services like Paypal Giving Fund would be helpful.

Patrick Mayerhofer 🔸Jul 14

Thanks both for the comments! In general, we have looked into other options, but so far couldn’t find anything yet that uses “pay-me-back-with-impact” behaviour to grow the giving network and increase donations on network size rather than higher donations per individual person. If you do know any similar apps, please let us know, I’d love to learn about them and chat with the founders. Here a "quick" summary:

The core problems we see in almost every donation app today

High friction. Too many clicks, sign-ups, or card forms before money moves.
No focus on effective giving. Most platforms highlight local or sentimental causes, not impact-maximised options.
Absent person-to-person network effect. Payments happen solo; nothing encourages viral “pay-me-back-with-impact” behaviour.

How existing services stack up against those problems

• Givey. Great for small UK charities (no effective-giving defaults). Has no person-to-person network effect.

• GoodCoin. A white-label “donate inside your banking app” tool. Clever B2B concept, yet it relies on each bank’s marketing and creates no person-to-person network effect.

• RoundUp App. Rounds card purchases to charity; a different mechanic that remains entirely solo, so the network effect never kicks in.

• Charityvest. Modern donor-advised fund with zero platform fee, optimised for tax-savvy givers, not casual IOUs or gift cards between friends.

• PayPal Giving Fund. Huge volumes but lives inside merchant checkouts; donors can’t pass balances to friends or settle IOUs, so no person-to-person network effect.

Why GoodWallet’s timing is right now

Digital wallets have crossed the chasm. They’re now the third-most popular way to donate, ahead of cheques.
One-click rails are commoditised. Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal give us instant checkout flows that early pioneers had to build from scratch.
Social money norms are maturing. Sending €10 on Revolut or Monzo already feels natural; letting that repayment default to charity is the obvious next step.

GoodWallet’s angle: remove every click possible, surface effective-giving defaults, and bake person-to-person network effects into everyday repayments and gift cards. The incumbents above do great work in their own niches; what’s missing is a product that turns people into the distribution channel.

Benjamin Jaeger 🔸Jul 16

I truly believe the public API could be a game-changer.

For example, I envision a loyalty card where GoodWallet users receive charitable contributions on purchases, similar to how cashback programs work. This could eventually lead to an inversion of the current paradigm, where end-users are asked for donations at checkout (for example). With the GoodWallet, corporations would be the ones donating by paying into people's GoodWallets.

Of course, there are many more examples: a donation-based airbnb, a marketplace, any "sharing platform" like car sharing, bike sharing etc. I'm curious to see where this goes and if there are any showstoppers that might have led to previous failed attempts at building something like this.

Verónica Suárez M.Jul 14

Great idea!

For future consideration, enabling different languages to reach a broader audience. And maybe consider something like an Emergency Fund (like Founder's Pledge Rapid Response Fund, or even for disasters, for highly cost-effective emergency responses), as people tend to donate more one-off in those situations.

Also, I like the idea of a single place to manage charitable activities, so GoodWallet can potentially become a recurrent-donation platform.

Keep up the good work!

Patrick Mayerhofer 🔸Jul 21

These are great suggestions! We are currently reviewing opportunities to add more charities and the Rapid Response Fund could be a great way to go and might be interesting for people who like to save some of their funds in the GoodWallet for later donations.

Language considerations are definitely top of our minds!

Thanks for the suggestions Verónica!

Jason Hoelscher-ObermaierJul 14

Cool idea, curious to see where it will go!

Sign-up flow was super smooth and effectively prompted me to donate to the creators' goodwallet as a sign of appreciation and to encourage them to continue.

I'd be curious what this model can do for retention and motivation. Eg could donors to someone's goodwallet get an automated celebratory message when their share of the donation gets disbursed to the selected charity? Could they get a TLDR of what their specific share of the disbursed amount will achieve?

Patrick Mayerhofer 🔸Jul 11

Thanks for that comment Jason and for your donation to our GoodWallet :)

As for your questions: We are slowly getting to the point where we have built most of the features for a v1 (excluding UX design, which could be better). We are now slowly ramping up work for user growth, engagement, and retention. Having a native app will probably help for that, as it will allow us to send notifications. Currently, we are doing that with e-mail campaigns.

User growth, engagement, and retention is an entirely new field for us, but there are resources out there that we are learning from. If you know someone who might be interested in contributing some of their time or knowledge to this project, please let us now through a PM here or team@thegoodwallet.org .

Paul_LangJul 14

Awesome project! Just gave it a try and worked smoothly. Here are a few thoughts:

- In Switzerland people are using Twint for reimbursements. Maybe there is scope for a cooperation.
- Sounds like an excellent alternative to Buy Me a Coffee.
- Perhaps there is a way to interface this with Effektiv Spenden's Donation Voucher for tax deductibility in the DACH region and CZ. This could come with an option where you enter your marginal tax rate that is then factored into the donation.

Anyway, good luck with the project!

Patrick Mayerhofer 🔸Jul 12

Thanks Paul! Twint is one of those apps where a collaboration could be interesting in the future, I agree.

We actually branded ourselves as the Buy Me a Coffee for a bit, but moved in a different direction before we started growing users. We are still interested in getting to know content creators and influencers that might be interested in increasing their positive impact by sharing their GoodWallet profiles. If you know any, please let us now!

Finding a way to allow for tax deductibility is on our radar and we hopefully can tackle that issue soon :)

Paul_LangJul 12

Not sure if these content creators have sth like Petreon going where they accept sponsors, but they might be partially value aligned:

Money & Macro once did a promo for Give Directly
Wendover Productions once had a GiveWell ad the end.

Johannes Pichler 🔸Jul 14

Patrick Mayerhofer 🔸Jul 12

Thanks Johannes! We really appreciate any help with spreading the word :)

Rakefet Cohen Ben-AryeJul 33

Great, I wish I had it a long time ago! I created an account and a NotebookLM episode about it.

I know we're all rational people here, but I would suggest adding an option for users to customize their profile picture, background image, and QR code.

We want people to include this on their websites, and many would prefer it to be visually appealing.

As someone in the behavioral science field, I believe these features have a disproportionately influential impact.

Additionally, perhaps adding a web carousel on the main website that showcases specific use cases for requesting donations, rather than limiting this information to the newsletter.

Otherwise, a very user-friendly, simplicity-driven, convenience-first website!

Patrick Mayerhofer 🔸Jul 61

Thanks Rakefet! I listened to the NotebookLM, super cool haha. I will share this with our users if that's cool with you ;)

And I agree with all your comments. We will be working on adding these features in the app and hopefully also on the landing page soon!

Hopefully we will soon see people sharing their links and QR codes on their pages. If you have any other ideas on how to incentivize people to do so, please reach out to me!

drbrake 🔸Jul 32

I notice it receives/pays in Euros, a currency my credit card and bank don't support "natively". Is this liable to cause you problems with your costs? Would you need to support more currencies? Even if the underlying currency were the Euro, you should probably provide an option to see the amounts to be paid in the user's preferred currency as that makes it easier for people to visualise.

Patrick Mayerhofer 🔸Jul 61

Totally agree! It was easiest for implementation at the moment to go with one currency. We will soon add other currencies to make it easier and more user friendly for people from different parts of the world :)

drbrake 🔸Jul 32

It would be nice if there was a way to replace a normal "peer payment" app with GoodWallet so that I could receive a payment as before but with a percentage for effective giving either prompted to the payer or automatically subtracted from what I receive and given to my chosen charity.

Can you afford to continue to sustain the transaction cost of the donations indefinitely if this became popular? What is the percentage it actually costs you/someone to receive and pass on a payment?

Patrick Mayerhofer 🔸Jul 61

This could be a great use for a GoodWallet API integration!

There are multiple pathways that we can go, once we can't afford the transaction costs anymore. And I am looking forward for that problem to have ;)

We are currently paying standard PayPal transaction fees, but that will soon change when we implement a more cost effective payment processor. Some options for covering the transaction costs would be:

Allow users to donate a percentage of their payment directly to the GoodWallet and educate/visualize how much would be the minimum to cover fees. That is a common solution of many non for-profits.
Put the money that temporarily sits in someone's GoodWallet account before being donated into a savings account. This will generate extra cash through interest and could potentially cover fees.

These are just some options, but we will consider options in more detail when we hit that roadblock :)

karamelabdJul 23

Genuinely love this idea and see tons of potential.

A random far-fetched thought: some portion of every Venmo/PayPal/etc transfer to contribute to a good wallet, or some funds matching depending on the agreement.

I think also setting up similar agreements with corporate businesses that sometimes do donation matching can also pay off.

Best of luck with this venture Patrick and Benjamin, hope to read some exciting updates in the near future.

Patrick Mayerhofer 🔸Jul 21

Thanks Karam for the support!

For sure, eventually corporate partnerships would be super cool to consider. The use of the API as Benjamin lays it out above could go into that direction!

owyongsk 🔸Jul 1*2

Hey Patrick, congrats on the post and the launch!

Just wanted to add, at the beginning of the post, you could get a more concrete UX feedback if you just ask the forum readers to go directly to your landing page with a very small amount of explanation, write down their feedback. Then ask the user to read the rest of the forum post once they're done posting their feedback. I think it's worth trying next time you make another post!

Patrick Mayerhofer 🔸Jul 21

Thanks SK!

Amazing idea! That might help us improve the UX design!

Johannes RiemenschneiderJul 61

I love this concept and I really hope it gets the momentum required to really take off!

One minor bug report: I was trying to sign up to GoodWallet in Firefox via my Google account, which caused the website to already fill out [first_name][second_name] as my suggested GoodWallet-pagename. However, this string contained more than 20 characters, which made it impossible to create this wallet. Trying to delete this string to manually choose a smaller pagename did not work, which got me stuck in this step of signing up. Retrying the same process in Chrome worked just fine. (Let me know if you need more details to recreate the bug/if there is a dedicated way to report these sorts of issues properly.)

As already suggested by many other users, I also believe that increasing the tax efficiency is crucial. I am no expert what the best way of achieving this would be. However, I feel like my own likelihood of using this tool would drastically increase with its (perceived) monetary efficiency.