Set up a cash gift registry in three moves: decide who holds the money, connect a payment gateway in your own name, then publish funds your guests can picture. With Our Big Yes you connect your own Stripe account, so contributions settle into your bank on Stripe’s normal schedule with no platform cut taken along the way.
A cash fund is a named goal rather than a product listing. Guests pick a fund, choose an amount, pay by card and get a confirmation. Nothing about that is complicated. What separates a registry you enjoy running from one that quietly frustrates you is everything that happens in the gap between the guest paying and you being able to spend the money.
That gap is where custody lives.
Custody: the decision behind every other cost
Registry platforms fall into two camps.
In the custodial camp, contributions land in an account the platform controls, and you request a release. Honeyfund holds contributions in what it calls a “Honeyfund Wallet” until you redeem them. Hitchd holds funds until they are transferred, with the first payout held for 10 business days. Zola holds funds until the couple requests a transfer, and it only transfers to a United States checking account with a United States address, with no support for transfers to international bank accounts. All as published on their own sites, checked 2 August 2026.
In the direct camp, the platform never receives your gift money. The guest’s card is charged by a gateway registered in your name, and the settlement runs from that gateway to your bank. Our Big Yes is in this camp, and it is the reason our platform fee on gifts is 0%. We are not taking a cut because we never have the money to take a cut from.
Neither model is dishonest. But custody decides how fast you are paid, what payout options you are offered, and whether the platform can pay you in your country at all. Work out which camp a platform is in before you compare anything else.
Step 1: Choose your gateway before you design your funds
Most couples do this backwards. They spend an evening naming funds, then discover at checkout time that the payout options do not fit their bank.
Internationally, Stripe is the gateway to reach for. It handles card payments in a long list of currencies, it settles to your own bank account, and it is the account you connect to Our Big Yes using your own keys. Because the account is yours, your relationship for disputes, refunds and payout timing is with Stripe directly rather than with a wedding platform’s support queue.
South African couples have local alternatives that often suit them better, and Our Big Yes supports Paystack, Yoco, PayFast and iKhokha as well.
Whatever you choose, look up two things on the gateway’s own site before you commit: its standard processing fee, and its payout schedule for your country. Those two numbers are the entire ongoing cost of a direct registry.
Step 2: Connect the gateway to your site
Sign up at app.ourbigyes.com/start and build your site for free. You only pay when you publish, so you can see exactly what your guests will see before spending anything.
Stripe onboarding asks for identity details and the bank account you want payouts to land in, and it verifies those before enabling live payments. Start it early rather than the week of your invitations, because verification is not instant and it is the one step you cannot rush on the day you want to go live.
Once Stripe is active, connect it from your Our Big Yes dashboard with your own keys. From that point every gift a guest gives runs through your account.
Step 3: Build funds a mixed guest list can actually picture
A fund called “Honeymoon” collects less than a fund called “Two nights on the coast at the end of the trip”, because the second one gives a guest something to imagine handing you.
A few things worth doing when your guests are spread across countries:
- Offer a range of fund sizes so that both a modest gift and a generous one have somewhere natural to go.
- Avoid leaning on a single suggested amount. What reads as a normal wedding gift varies from one country to the next, and a single number will feel wrong to somebody.
- Mix in a fund that is not travel. Experience funds and charity items give guests who dislike giving cash for its own sake a reason to join in.
- Write two sentences explaining why you chose cash. Guests give more comfortably when they understand the reasoning.
Our Big Yes supports cash funds, experience funds and charity items alongside external links to gifts at any retailer, so guests who would rather buy something physical still have a path.
What a guest in another country actually experiences
Three practical points, all of which you can control:
Currency recognition. A guest deciding on an amount in a currency they do not think in tends to round down or hesitate. With Our Big Yes you can receive gifts in any currency Stripe supports, which lets you present amounts sensibly for your guest list rather than defaulting to whatever currency the platform happens to hold.
Conversion nobody chose. When a platform can only pay out in one currency, somebody absorbs a conversion. Better that it is a conversion you selected on your own gateway than one applied on the way through a custodial wallet.
No accounts. Guests should never have to register to give you money. On Our Big Yes each household gets its own secure personal link and there are no guest accounts, which matters even more when the guest is on a phone in a different timezone at an awkward hour.
Where the money sits, side by side
| Platform | Platform fee on gifts | Who holds the money | Payout constraint |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zola | 2.5% card handling, charged to guests by default | Zola, until you request a transfer | United States checking account with a United States address, no international transfers |
| Honeyfund | None charged as a platform fee, taken at redemption instead | A Honeyfund Wallet, until redeemed | Redemption method sets the fee: 0% to prepaid Mastercard or gift cards, 2.2% to PayPal or Venmo, 3.5% plus $0.59 to a bank account |
| Hitchd | 4.98% on contributions, paid by the couple, the guests, or split equally | Hitchd, until transferred | First payout held 10 business days, supported country list excludes South Africa |
| Our Big Yes | 0% | Nobody but your own gateway | Your gateway’s normal payout schedule |
Competitor figures are as published on their own sites, checked 2 August 2026. Honeyfund’s redemption fees are its published March 2026 figures.
When another platform suits you better
Honeyfund, if you do not want to onboard to a gateway at all. Its published 0% redemption to a prepaid Mastercard or to gift cards is genuinely free, and it says plainly that it does not charge platform fees. If gift cards and a prepaid card are a perfectly good way for you to receive wedding money, that route costs you nothing and skips gateway setup entirely.
Hitchd, if you specifically want the fee split with your guests. Very few platforms let you divide the cost that way, and its published 4.98% can be paid by the couple, by the guests, or split equally. If sharing the cost matters more to you than the size of it, that flexibility is worth something.
Zola, if you are a United States couple who is happy for guests to cover the handling fee. The bank account requirement that blocks everyone else is not a problem for you.
After the wedding
Gift tracking is the part couples forget to plan for and then badly need. Our Big Yes includes gift, vendor and thank-you tracking, so you can see who gave to which fund and send personalised thank-you messages without rebuilding the list from your bank statement. The features page covers the full set, and the pricing page has the one-time publish fee in both currencies.
Marrying in South Africa?
Local gateways, local guest habits and rand pricing change the practical advice. We have a separate walkthrough for that: setting up a cash gift registry for a South African wedding.
Get custody right and the rest of a cash registry is straightforward. Your guests give to something they can picture, your gateway does the processing it already does well, and the money reaches you without a detour.
Start for free at app.ourbigyes.com/start and connect your own gateway when you are ready.