givestar raises $12m growth funding for UK and US expansion

givestar, the UK fundraising technology company behind the charity app of the same name, has raised $12m in growth funding to expand in the UK and the United States. The round was announced by lead investor Mercia Ventures on 24 September 2026, with participation from Love Ventures. UK trade title BusinessCloud had reported the same transaction a day earlier, on 23 September 2026, describing it as a £9m round.

givestar is the trading name of TapTap Giving Ltd in the UK and TapTap Giving US Inc in the US. Companies House records TapTap Giving Ltd, company number 11323235, as an active private limited company incorporated in England on 23 April 2018.

Two figures for one round

Mercia's announcement states the round at $12m. BusinessCloud's account, published the day before, puts the same transaction at £9m. The two reports appear to describe a single deal rather than two separate rounds, but neither source discloses the exchange rate or the date used to convert between the two currencies. A reader comparing the figures has no way to check whether they reconcile precisely, and this article reports both as they were published rather than presenting a single converted total.

Mercia describes the funding as growth funding. Some secondary reporting elsewhere refers to a Series A, but no formal transaction documents were available to confirm how the round is classified, and this piece does not adopt that label.

What the money is for

Mercia and BusinessCloud both say the investment will support product development, team growth, and expansion in the UK and US. Neither source sets out a detailed allocation between those uses, a recruitment target, or a deployment timetable. Readers should treat "UK and US expansion" as a stated intention rather than a costed plan, since no further breakdown has been published.

From a single tap point to a fundraising platform

givestar's own account of its history, set out on its website, begins with a product called Tap to Donate, which the company says turned a smartphone into a contactless donation point. givestar says this first went live in 2019 at Topshop on Oxford Street, in support of the mental health charity CALM. The company launched a consumer app in 2022.

Mercia describes the business today as a platform connecting charities, fundraisers, donors and events, supporting digital and event fundraising, supporter engagement and charity stewardship. That description comes from the company and its lead investor rather than an independent assessment of the product, but it marks a clear shift from a single-purpose contactless donation tool towards a broader piece of fundraising infrastructure.

Scale, according to the company and its investor

Mercia's announcement includes a set of operating figures for givestar as at 24 September 2026. These numbers come from the company and its lead investor; none of them is independently audited, and the announcement does not set out how they were calculated.

Several of these figures sit awkwardly alongside numbers published elsewhere on givestar's own website. The site describes a 2026 milestone of 500,000 members, well short of the nearly 800,000 accounts cited in the funding announcement; it is not clear whether the two figures measure the same population, or whether one is simply more recent than the other. The site also displays both £45m and £50m as its cumulative amount raised to date on the same page, with no update date attached to either figure, and both sit some way below the "more than $70m" cited by Mercia. Currency differences and timing may account for part of the gap, but the website offers no reconciliation, and the discrepancy between its own two figures is unexplained.

The 76% under-35 figure carries no stated methodology or definition of the user cohort it covers.

US expansion: events and PayPal Giving Fund

Mercia says givestar has partnerships across more than 70 US events, naming Bay to Breakers, the Las Vegas Marathon and the Portland Marathon among them. No complete list of these partnerships or details of the underlying contracts was available.

givestar's US platform-user terms, last updated 18 June 2026, state that donations made through the US service may go to PayPal Giving Fund, which then retains discretion over onward grants to the charities donors have recommended. This means a US donor's money does not necessarily go directly to the charity they select; PayPal Giving Fund receives the donation and retains discretion over how onward grants are made. This describes the company's contractual terms rather than every individual US transaction.

Regulatory status and what has not been confirmed

givestar's website states that TapTap Giving Ltd is registered with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) under the Payment Services Regulations 2017, quoting registration number 933815. This claim appears on the company's own site; the current FCA register entry, and the precise scope of any permissions attached to that registration, could not be independently confirmed for this article.

Neither the current status of that registration nor whether any Financial Services Compensation Scheme or Financial Ombudsman Service protection applies to givestar's UK activity was established from the available material, and none should be assumed.

Separately, givestar's US terms describe the company as facilitating donations rather than acting as a payment service provider in the US context. That description relates to the US entity and its terms; it should not be read across to the UK operation, which makes a distinct claim to FCA registration on its own website.

What to watch next

Further detail that would sharpen this picture includes: any breakdown of how the funding is allocated between UK expansion, US expansion, product development and hiring; the number, location and timing of new roles; independent confirmation of givestar's current FCA register entry and its scope; and a reconciliation of the conflicting totals on givestar's own website for funds raised to date. Companies House filings for TapTap Giving Ltd, and any further disclosures from Mercia Ventures or givestar, are the primary places a reader could check for updates once available.