Security and compliance
Nothing here should require taking our word for it
Your donors trust you with a generous impulse, and you are trusting us with the part where it becomes money. Every claim on this page names the standard behind it, so you can check.
Certified to
PCI-DSS Level 1
Card data, via Stripe
TLS 1.3 and AES-256
In transit and at rest
PIPEDA and GDPR-ready
Donor privacy
In progress
FINTRAC registration
Registration as a Money Services Business is what regulated payment processing in Canada requires. It is not complete, which is why donations are open in the United States first and Canada follows once it is.
Money
Card details never touch our servers.
That is not a policy choice we could reverse later; it is how the system is built. Payments run entirely inside Stripe, which is certified at the highest level the card networks define.
PCI-DSS Level 1
The highest level of payment security certification. Card data is processed and stored exclusively inside Stripe's certified infrastructure, and Givelayer has no access to card numbers at any point.
Encrypted in transit and at rest
TLS 1.3 for everything in transit, AES-256 for everything at rest. There is no configuration where a donor's details travel unencrypted.
Two-step charity verification
Charitable status is confirmed against the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search, and banking identity is verified separately through Stripe's KYC process. Both must pass before an organisation can receive money.
Fraud screening on every transaction
Automated screening runs on each donation before it settles, and payouts go directly to the organisation's own bank account rather than through an intermediary balance we hold.
Receipts
What actually has to be on a compliant receipt.
Most platforms describe their receipts as compliant and leave it there. Below is the specific list the Canada Revenue Agency requires under IT-110R3, published so it can be checked against the regulation rather than taken on trust. Receipting is live in the United States today; the Canadian issuer is built to this specification and switches on with Canadian payouts.
What a CRA receipt will carry
Built and ready for Canadian launch. Receipting is live in the United States today; this is the specification the Canadian issuer is built against, published so it can be checked against the regulation rather than taken on trust.
- The charity's registered name and BN/RR number
- The location of the charity's registered office
- A unique sequential receipt number
- The date the donation was received
- The full name and address of the donor
- The eligible amount of the gift
- A description of any advantage, where one applies
- The name and website of the Canada Revenue Agency
And how they are issued
- Generated on confirmation, not batched at year end
- Sequentially numbered and audit-ready from day one
- Bilingual support, English and French
- IRS-compliant acknowledgments for US 501(c)(3) organisations
- Archived in your dashboard and re-sendable without a support ticket
- The receipt reflects the full donation, not the amount net of fees
Where receipting is live
Receipting is the one part of Givelayer that is country by country, because each one answers to its own revenue authority. Automated compliant receipting runs in the United States today. Canada (CRA) is coming soon. Everything else is wider: a profile and a short link are open to any charity anywhere, and we are currently accepting donations in the United States. Outside the live receipting region, confirm local requirements with your own tax authority in the meantime.
Data
Your donor list is an asset. It stays yours.
A donor file is the most valuable thing a charity owns, and the thing it is most often quietly asked to trade for a free product. We do not make that trade.
We collect the minimum
Name, email and donation amount. We do not ask for anything a receipt does not require, and we do not enrich donor records from third-party sources.
We never sell data
Not to advertisers, not to data brokers, not to other charities. There is no tier of the product where this changes, and no clause in the terms that reserves the right.
Row-level isolation
One organisation's donor records are not reachable from another organisation's session, enforced at the database layer rather than in application code.
Export and deletion on request
Download every gift, in a usable format, at any time. Deletion requests are honoured within the statutory window, subject to the record-retention periods tax law imposes on receipts.
Retention with a reason
Receipt records are held for the period the CRA and IRS require and no longer. Everything else is deleted when it stops being needed.
PIPEDA and GDPR
PIPEDA compliant in Canada, with GDPR-ready infrastructure for donors in the European Economic Area.
Infrastructure
What it runs on, named.
A security page that will not say which providers it depends on is not telling you anything. Here is the list.
Stripe
All payment processing and storage. PCI-DSS Level 1 certified. Givelayer has zero access to card numbers.
Enterprise database
Donor records with row-level isolation and AES-256 encryption at rest. Residency configured per jurisdiction.
Cloudflare
Static assets served from the nearest edge for speed. Donor personal data never touches the CDN layer.
Automated backups
Continuous, encrypted, and restore-tested, so a bad day is a recovery rather than a loss.
Cross-border donations
When a donor outside Canada or the United States gives to a charity inside one of them, the data is processed under the charity’s home jurisdiction rather than the donor’s. Donations are welcome from anywhere; local receipt compliance is built before we launch in a market, not after.
Reporting
Found something? Tell us directly.
We would rather hear about a vulnerability from you than from someone else. Reports go straight to the engineering team, we acknowledge within one business day, and we will not pursue action against anyone reporting in good faith.
Built to be trusted with someone else’s generosity
Any charity, anywhere, can claim a giving profile today. Talk to us about yours.
Free to join · No card required · No setup fees