Similar to the relief efforts surrounding the Haiti earthquake last year, technology companies are actively encouraging their users to donate to campaigns coordinating relief efforts in Japan, which suffered a massive earthquake and tsunami a little over a week ago. As we learned this past week, Zynga’s gamers have raised over $1 million, and Facebook app Causes has raised $700,000 from tens of thousands of donors to the Japan relief effort. And today, PayPal and parent company eBay are announcing $1 million raised by users towards the the Japan earthquake and tsunami relief campaigns.
PayPal users have donated $793,000 via the payments giant’s web campaign, here. Users can donate funds towards the American Red Cross, GlobalGiving, HandsOn Tokyo and a number of other organizations helping with the relief efforts in the country.
Sellers and shoppers on eBay.com have raised $207,000 by donating proceeds of their eBay sales and by giving a donation at checkout. And PayPal is now crediting transactional fees incurred from March 11 to April 10, 2011, to any US 501(c)(3) organization or Canada Revenue Agency registered charity fundraising to aid Japan relief. This also includes donations made via mobile phone.
PayPal’s act of waiving its fees is notable considering that many credit card companies have yet to do so when it concerns donations. Mobile phone carriers, including AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile, have all eliminating texting fees for SMS messages sent for donation purposes towards the earthquake and tsunami relief.