Cash Gifts on a Registry in Canada: What Actually Reaches You

Asking for money used to feel rude. It doesn't any more — couples already own the toaster, new parents would rather have help with daycare, and anyone moving house would take the moving van over another set of placemats.

So most Canadian registries now accept cash. What nobody puts on the front page is how much of it arrives.

The headline percentage is only half the answer. The other half is who actually pays the fee — because a platform advertising 0% may be quietly asking your guests to cover it, and a platform charging 5% may be absorbing the card costs so nobody else sees a bill.

The two ways money moves

Almost every Canadian option works one of two ways, and this is the fork that explains most of the pricing.

Card payments (Stripe, PayPal). Your guest pays with any credit or debit card, from anywhere in the world, in about twenty seconds. Visa and Mastercard charge the platform roughly 2.9% + 30¢ for that, so somebody has to absorb it — the platform, the recipient, or the guest.

Interac e-Transfer. Effectively free to move, which is why some platforms can advertise 0%. The trade-off is reach and friction: your guest needs a Canadian bank account, has to leave the registry to send the transfer, and there is usually no card, no rewards points, and no automatic record of who gave what. Grandparents overseas are out.

Neither is wrong. They are different products, and the fee table makes a lot more sense once you know which one you are looking at.

What each registry charges

Rates as published in September 2026. Fees change — check the current terms before you commit to a platform.

How to read that table

A flat fee is brutal on small gifts. $6.99 on a $100 gift is 7%. On a $25 gift from a student cousin it is 28%. Percentage fees scale with the gift; flat fees punish the people giving least.

"The guest pays" is not free. It is the same money, moved to a different line on the screen. A guest who budgeted $100 and is shown $103.50 at checkout will sometimes reduce the gift to land back on a round number — so a fee charged to guests can quietly cost you more than one charged to you.

Watch for two-stage fees. A platform can advertise a small per-contribution fee and then charge again when you withdraw. Add both before comparing.

0% is genuinely cheaper — if Interac suits your guest list. If everyone attending banks in Canada and you don't mind the manual step, an Interac-based registry costs less than anything card-based can. If you have guests abroad, or want them to just tap a card on the registry page, you are paying for that convenience one way or another.

Where we sit

Gift List charges 5%, and that is the entire deduction. Stripe's card processing comes out of our 5% rather than being added on top, so a $100 gift arrives as $95 and your guest is charged exactly $100. No monthly fee, no setup fee, and nothing at all if a fund never receives a contribution.

We are not the cheapest option on this page and we are not going to pretend otherwise — an Interac transfer between two Canadian bank accounts will always beat a card payment on price. What you get for the 5% is that anyone can give from anywhere with any card, you see who contributed and how much, and the money lands in your bank account without you chasing anyone.

Asking for cash without the awkwardness

The fee is the easy part. The etiquette is what people actually worry about.

Give it a purpose. "Help with the honeymoon" or "towards the nursery" gets a far warmer response than "cash gifts". People like knowing what they bought.

Keep real gifts on the list too. A registry that is only a cash fund reads as a request for money. A mix lets guests choose, and plenty still prefer handing over something wrapped.

Suggest amounts, don't set them. A few preset amounts help people who have no idea what is normal. A minimum reads as a price list.

Let people give together. A $400 stroller is out of reach for one guest and easy for five. Group gifting turns an aspirational item into a realistic one.

Say thank you specifically. "Thank you for helping with the flights" beats "thanks for the gift", and cash gifts get forgotten faster than objects if you don't.

Setting one up

On Gift List it takes about a minute: create a registry, add a fund item with a goal and a short note about what it is for, and connect Stripe so payouts reach your bank. Guests see a normal checkout, you see contributions as they arrive.

If you want the detail, collecting cash gifts on your registry covers how funds work, and setting up Stripe for cash gifts walks through the payout side. The fees page has the short version.

Whichever platform you land on, do the $100 arithmetic before you send the link out. It is a two-minute check that tells you more than any pricing page.