New on Hack Club Bank: No more payment processing fees
We often say Hack Club is by the students, for the students. Hack Club Bank is no exception — I’m a 17-year-old hackathon organizer, founder of the Hack Club at my high school, and I now design Hack Club Bank itself.
Last summer, I helped build the Bank prototype; then last winter, I redesigned the whole app for 1.0. Even as a core developer of Bank, I found receiving money stressful and confusing when running Hack Pennsylvania last January,
As a high schooler, I’m used to receiving money by being handed cash or friends using Venmo or Apple Pay. It’s always fast, free, and mostly painless.
When receiving payments from sponsors in Hack Club Bank, I was exposed to the concept of a payment processor charging a fee on every transaction. None of the fees were huge—1%, 3.5%, or $10 flat— but they created enormous psychological weight.
Trying to keep track of sponsor commitments, Bank fees, estimated processing fees, and timelines made budgeting for Hack Pennsylvania infuriating. We were estimating payment processing fees down to the dollars & cents—until we eventually gave up after getting it wrong so many times.
The whole idea felt wrong: we were spending dozens of hours convincing companies to donate money to our nonprofit event out of sheer generosity, then credit card companies we had no relationship with were sucking out fees we couldn’t even keep track of.
I know my team wasn’t alone in our frustration. So, today I’m proud to share we’re doing something about it.
Starting today, we’re eliminating all payment processing fees from Hack Club Bank.
With today’s changes, the 7% cost of Bank is now all-inclusive and you’ll never pay a nickel more. No extra cost for credit cards, bank transfers, or checks.
Under the hood, two simultaneous transactions occur: your sponsor’s payment minus processing fees charged by Stripe, Hack Club Bank’s payment processor, then our reimbursement of Stripe’s fees.
We’ve also redesigned the invoice page to show you all the details.
What about past invoices? We’re reimbursing the processing fees on every single invoice on Bank, ever. If you’re an event organizer, you’ll see anywhere from a few dollars to a few hundred arrive in your account this week. No strings attached.
Using Bank costs the same 7% of income to cover our operating costs. Hack Club doesn’t make any profit: half goes to Michael’s salary (who onboards, assists, and manages the books for all our events), and the rest is split between accounting, tax filing, and legal fees (for example, writing the attendee contracts).
Starting my first hackathon, storing money was one of my biggest worries.
Local banks wouldn’t open an account, and my school was a non-starter. Hack Club Bank made it easy, and I’m now a veteran user — Hack Happy Valley was the first event ever run on the platform, before an app had been built; Hack Pennsylvania ran on Bank’s beta; now, the upcoming Windy City Hacks is running on the new 1.0. I’ve seen Bank evolve throughout the past year, but one thing remains consistent — how it unlocks financial services for me as a young person. Dollars come in, I swipe my card to buy event supplies. Done.
With our new all-inclusive pricing, Bank even further simplifies event organizing. As your event raises sponsorship, instead of counting the dollars and cents of unpredictable fees, the money you expected all along arrives.
Now, you get simpler, more predictable accounting, and a 100% reimbursement of past fees. These kinds of releases are what make me so proud to be making Hack Club Bank, and organizing with it myself.
