What happens to your card.

You type in the card

Any Visa, Mastercard, Amex, or Discover gift card you already own. If it only works at one shop, Dona cannot help; that money is stuck with the shop.

The number goes into a field run by Stripe, not by Dona. It never touches Dona’s servers and nobody here can read it. What Dona keeps is the brand, the last four digits, and the expiry date, which is what you see on your own screen when you come back to it.

Dona also asks what the card was worth when you got it. Not what is left, which you almost certainly do not know. Just the number printed on it.

Dona finds what is left

Here is the honest version, because it affects what you might see on your phone. There is no way to ask a gift card what is on it. No lookup exists, for anyone. A shop till gets around this by asking for $5.00 and having the card answer “I only have $3.00,” but that trick is not available online.

So Dona finds out by trying. It attempts an amount, and the card either takes it or says there is not enough. Dona narrows in from there until it knows the balance to the penny, then takes exactly that and puts it in your wallet.

That can take up to 18 attempts on one card, and most of them are refused. Only one ever goes through. If your bank texts you about a declined transaction while this is happening, that is why, and it costs you nothing. Your card is charged once, for the amount that landed in your wallet, and never for more than the figure you gave Dona.

Once in a while a card issuer decides it has seen enough and stops answering. Dona keeps whatever it already found, tells you the exact figure, and lets you go after the rest later.

The money waits in your wallet

Recovered money sits in your Dona wallet until you move it. The wallet holds $500.00 at a time, which is enough for a good-sized drawer of cards.

It is not a bank account. It is a running record of what Dona owes you, it earns no interest, and it is not FDIC insured. If nothing has moved for 90 days, Dona emails you and nudges you to take it out. The money is yours the whole time.

You send it to your bank

The first time, you connect a bank account through Stripe, which checks who you are. Dona collects no documents and keeps only your bank’s name and the last four digits of the account.

The account is in your own name. Money can only ever go from your card to your own bank, which means Dona cannot be used to pay anybody else, and nobody can use it to pay you.

Transfers land in one to two business days. If one fails, the money and the fee both come straight back to your wallet and you can try again.

What it costs

Adding a card is free. You pay only when money leaves your wallet: $1.00 under $100.00 and $2.50 above it. You need $4.00 in the wallet before you can send it, so a very thin card is worth pooling with a few others. Paying $499.00 once removes the fee and the minimum for ten years.

That flat fee is the whole of how Dona makes money. Dona takes no percentage of your balance. Everything found on the card is credited to you in full, and a service that buys cards at a discount keeps the difference where Dona has no difference to keep.

What Dona will not do

Dona does not buy, sell, trade, or resell gift cards, and never owns your card. It does not issue cards or credit of its own. It is not a bank. It is not connected to any card issuer, shop, or card network, and nobody is paying it to send you anywhere.

What Dona cannot promise

Sometimes a card is simply empty, or expired, or the issuer refuses it outright. Then nothing is pulled, nothing is charged, and Dona tells you plainly rather than leaving you guessing. Sometimes a few cents are left behind that the card will not give up.

The full terms, including what you agree to when you ask Dona to charge a card, are in the terms of service.