Tithely Tap vs Tap.Giving: The Hardware, Compared

What Does Each Company Actually Sell?

Both sell a small, passive NFC disc that a church mounts at the seat so givers can tap a phone and donate. Neither disc has a battery or needs power. That much is shared, and it is worth saying plainly so nobody buys on a feature that both products have.

Tithely Tap is one product inside a platform. The disc is made to open a Tithely Giving page, so it is sold to churches that run, or are willing to run, their online giving on Tithely. Tithely offers a standard Tithely-branded disc and a custom disc with your logo, and the Tap product itself carries no separate monthly charge because it is bundled with a Tithely account.

Tap.Giving sells the hardware and only the hardware. We make custom-branded 4-inch discs and nothing else. We are not a payment processor and we do not run your giving page. The disc opens the giving URL you already have, on whatever platform you already chose, and that platform keeps handling the payment, the receipt, the donor record, and the deposit. This page compares the discs themselves; for the platform side, including Tithely Giving processing fees and the five-year cost math, see our Tithely Tap-to-Give cost and fees breakdown.

How Much Does Each Disc Cost?

The fair comparison is custom disc to custom disc, because a church almost always wants its own logo on the thing bolted to the pew. Here is what each company charges for custom-branded discs, from each company's own published pricing.

A smaller church feels the minimum first. Tithely's custom disc starts at 250 units, so the smallest custom order is already north of $1,000 plus shipping. A 150-seat church that wants 150 branded discs can order exactly that from Tap.Giving: 150 discs at $5.00 is $750 one-time, shipping included, and that is the whole bill.

Tithely does sell a cheaper standard disc at $2.50 each with a 50-disc minimum, but it carries Tithely's branding rather than your church's logo, and like the custom disc it still only opens a Tithely Giving page. If you want your own logo at the seat, the honest number to compare is the custom price above.

What Is Inside the Disc: Material, Chip, and Size

At the hardware level, both products are NFC discs built to be tapped, and a giver will not feel a difference between them during the offering. Where we can be specific, we are, because a thing you screw to a pew for the next decade should come with its spec sheet.

Tap.Giving discs are durable waterproof PVC, 4 inches across, with a locked NTAG213 chip. Locked means the encoded giving URL cannot be overwritten by a stranger with a phone. Each disc also carries a printed QR code so an older phone that will not read the tap still reaches the same giving page, and they ship with adhesive backing and pre-drilled screw holes so you can mount them on a pew, a chair back, or a seat-back pocket.

Tithely does not publish the material, chip model, or exact dimensions of its Tap discs on its product page, so we will not guess at them here. They are a legitimate NFC disc, not a sticker, and they work the way any tap disc works. If those specs matter to your trustees, that gap in Tithely's published information is itself worth a note: ask their team to confirm the chip and whether it ships locked.

The Real Difference: What Each Disc Can Open

This is the decision. A Tithely Tap disc opens a Tithely Giving page, so using one means running your church's online giving on Tithely. If your giving already lives on Pushpay, Subsplash, Donorbox, Givelify, Anedot, or anything else, adopting Tithely Tap means migrating your entire giving stack first, then paying Tithely's platform fees on every gift from that point on.

A Tap.Giving disc points wherever you tell it to. We encode it with the giving URL you already use, including a Tithely URL if that is where your church gives. You keep your platform, your processor, your donor history, and your reporting, and you add tap-to-give on top without changing a thing about how the money moves.

There is one more practical wrinkle: a giving URL can change. Every Tap.Giving order includes our Redirect Dashboard free, permanently, at any quantity, so if your giving link ever moves you re-point the discs in a few clicks instead of reordering them. That is included, not an upsell, and it never requires a subscription.

What It Costs Over Three Years

Hardware is a one-time number, so a one-year price tag hides the real cost of a disc that is chained to a platform. The Tap.Giving disc is bought once and owes nothing after that: no monthly plan, no required subscription, and no fee from us on any gift, this year or in five years.

A Tithely Tap disc only functions while you keep a Tithely Giving account, and Tithely takes a processing cut of every digital gift that flows through it. On a church giving $100,000 a year online, that platform cost runs into the thousands of dollars a year, every year, for as long as you use the discs. The disc is cheap; the platform it requires is the recurring line item. We ran the full breakdown in our Tithely vs. Tap.Giving cost comparison.

We ran the full three-year math for a 200-disc church, Tithely Tap against Tap.Giving, in a separate post so this one can stay focused on the hardware. If you are building the number a board will actually vote on, start there: the Tithely Tap 3-year cost breakdown.

When Tithely Tap Is the Right Pick

Here is the honest carve-out. If your church already runs all of its giving on Tithely, is happy there, and has no plan to leave, then a Tithely Tap disc is a reasonable convenience: it is bundled with an account you already pay for, and it keeps everything under one login. For that specific church, buying the disc from Tithely is a fine call.

For every other church, the disc should not decide your platform. If you give on anything other than Tithely, if you are a smaller church held up by the 250-disc minimum, or if you simply do not want your hardware to lock in your processor, Tap.Giving gives you the same tap at the seat without any of that: custom discs from 100 units, free shipping, your logo, your platform, and nothing owed after you buy them.

FAQ: Tithely Tap vs Tap.Giving

Related Articles

• Tithely Tap-to-Give Cost & Fees for Churches (2026): the platform side, with processing fees and the five-year math.
• Tithely Tap 3-Year Cost vs Tap.Giving
• How to Set Up Tap-to-Give on Tithely
• Tap-to-Give Hardware Compared Across Platforms