Merchant Donation

Overview

A merchant donation is a voluntary cryptocurrency or fiat contribution accepted through a merchant account, donation campaign, or payment service. The merchant configures the recipient, campaign, accepted assets, branding, optional amount, conversion, and acknowledgment process. It should be separated from product sales because donor intent, receipts, refunds, restricted funds, privacy, and tax treatment can differ. For teams linking Merchant Donation to Merchant Donation Link, public links and receiving addresses should be verified against substitution, while donor data should be minimized and retained only for defined operational or legal purposes.

Important risks include fake campaigns, unauthorized destination changes, donor privacy leakage, unsupported assets, volatile valuation, sanctions exposure, and misleading tax receipts.

Records should preserve campaign, legal recipient, donor preference, payment request, transaction, valuation, fees, conversion, receipt, restrictions, and refund decision.

For Merchant Donation, the operational boundary with Merchant Donation Link and Donation Link should be explicit. Identifiers for Merchant Donation should connect those records without allowing either linked status to overwrite its own state.

For Merchant Donation, public-facing content and payment instructions are high-risk change points. When Merchant Donation interacts with Merchant Donation Link, campaign ownership, domains, links, QR codes, and receiving addresses should be authenticated and monitored for substitution. In the relationship between Merchant Donation and Donation Link, donor data should be minimized, access-controlled, and retained only for defined fundraising, compliance, support, and receipt purposes.

For Merchant Donation, reconciliation should show gross contributions, network and service fees, conversions, net proceeds, restricted allocations, refunds, and transfers to the beneficiary. When Merchant Donation interacts with Merchant Donation Link, recurring donations require versioned consent and prompt cancellation. In the relationship between Merchant Donation and Donation Link, operational procedures should also address duplicate contributions, unsupported assets, mistaken payments, sanctions screening where applicable, and valuation at the time required by accounting or tax policy.