pushpay.io

What It Is

Pushpay is a payments platform focused on mobile payments, gifts, and donation collection, while also offering REST APIs and Webhooks for merchants and third-party developers. Typical use cases include collecting payments through online shopping carts, receiving donations for organizations or churches, syncing payment data to accounting software or CRMs, and helping payers find payable organizations via merchant lists, geolocation, and related features.

Core Capabilities

Based on the documentation, the Pushpay API appears relatively mature in design: it uses JSON, HAL+JSON links, standard HTTP status codes, paginated results, and a consistent error format. Authentication uses OAuth2 bearer tokens and JWT, with permissions controlled through scopes. Developers can create and track anticipated payments, retrieve transaction amounts, payer email addresses, phone numbers, names, and reference fields, as well as query batch, settlement, and payment details. For payment methods, the documentation explicitly mentions credit cards and ACH as the main options, with test cards covering Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover. The batch structure also includes statistical fields for cash and checks. Supported currencies listed include AUD, NZD, USD, and CAD.

Pricing and Settlement

The public documentation does not disclose merchant rates, platform monthly fees, transaction fees, refund costs, or chargeback costs, so it is not possible to assess its real cost competitiveness. On settlement, the documentation explains that Settlement/Deposit/Batch refers to transaction batches deposited into the merchant’s bank account for reconciliation, but it does not specify T+ settlement timing or payout cycles for different payment methods.

Pros and Cons

The advantages are detailed API documentation, support for Swagger, a sandbox environment, test cards, and ACH test accounts, plus the ability to integrate deeply with CRMs, accounting software, and shopping carts. Batch and settlement data are also helpful for reconciliation in organization-based payment scenarios. The drawbacks are that production access requires contacting the API Support Team to enable a client_id/client_secret, so it is not fully self-service; official client support outside .NET appears limited; and supported countries, compliance licenses, pricing, and settlement timelines are all opaque.

Who It’s For and Access from China

Pushpay is better suited to existing Pushpay merchants, churches/nonprofits, software vendors that need donation and reconciliation integrations, and developers building B2B integrations around its ecosystem. The documentation does not provide information about access from mainland China, so this remains unknown. If you need to collect payments from Chinese users, you should typically also evaluate alternatives such as Stripe, PayPal, Adyen, Braintree, Square, or local options like WeChat Pay and Alipay.