From €7K to €11,836: How TAPiTAG Gamified Donations Changed Fundraising at the Irish eCommerce Awards
By late in the evening, there was another competition happening at the Irish eCommerce Awards.
Not for a trophy.
For the top of the donation leaderboard.
Every table in the room had its own custom TAPiTAG.
Guests could tap it with their phone or scan the QR code.
A branded donation page opened instantly in their browser.
And when a donation was made, it did not simply disappear quietly into a payment system.
The room reacted.
A donation could trigger a live on-screen announcement.
A table could jump up the leaderboard.
Confetti could appear across the display.
The amount raised moved closer to the target.
The top three changed in real time.
And hundreds of guests could see the competition unfolding above the stage.
By the end of the campaign, €11,836 had been raised for Barnardos.
For TAPiTAG, it was the third consecutive year powering donations at the Irish eCommerce Awards — and the clearest example yet of what happens when fundraising becomes part of the experience rather than something happening quietly in the background.
The 2026 Irish eCommerce Awards took place on Friday, 18 September at The Round Room in Dublin's Mansion House, with Fiserv as title sponsor. The event brings together retailers, technology providers, agencies and entrepreneurs from across Ireland's eCommerce industry.
For the third year, TAPiTAG was there to solve a very different eCommerce challenge:
How do you turn a room full of people into active donors?
€11,836 Raised for Barnardos
The number that matters most came at the end of the night:
€11,836
raised for Barnardos.
Barnardos works with vulnerable children and families across Ireland, delivering services through communities around the country.
But the €11,836 figure becomes more interesting when you look at what has happened over the three years TAPiTAG has powered the donation experience at the Awards.
| Year | Approx. amount raised | Donation experience |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | c. €7,000 | TAPiTAG digital donations, no live leaderboard |
| 2025 | €8,689 / c. €9,000 | TAPiTAG digital donations, no live leaderboard |
| 2026 | €11,836 | Full TAPiTAG Gamified Donations experience + live leaderboard |
The publicly reported 2025 total was €8,689.
From roughly €7,000 in year one to €11,836 in year three, the amount raised has increased by approximately 69%.
And from the publicly reported €8,689 in 2025 to €11,836 in 2026, the increase is roughly 36% year on year.
That does not mean a leaderboard alone can be credited with every additional euro donated.
But the biggest change to the fundraising experience in year three was significant:
the donations became live.
The NFC Tag Removes the Friction. The Software Creates the Momentum.
The physical side of TAPiTAG Gamified Donations is deliberately simple.
Every table received its own custom-designed NFC + QR donation tag, created to fit the visual identity of the Irish eCommerce Awards and its event partners.
A guest did not need to:
download an app, search for a charity website, type a long URL or leave the table looking for a donation point.
They simply tapped or scanned.
The relevant TAPiTAG-powered donation experience opened in their phone's web browser.
TAPiTAG's current Gamified Donations platform combines branded NFC + QR hardware with mobile donation pages, live displays, leaderboards, milestones and real-time notifications.
But the physical tag is really only the starting point.
The software is where the fundraising experience changes.
What If Every Donation Became a Moment?
Think about how a traditional digital donation normally works.
Someone opens a donation page.
They give €20.
They see a thank-you screen.
Nobody else in the room knows it happened.
The donation has succeeded technically.
But from the perspective of the event, almost nothing happened.
TAPiTAG Gamified Donations turns that around.
At the Irish eCommerce Awards, a significant donation could trigger a live notification on the event display:
TABLE 12 HAS DONATED €1,000
Confetti.
An updated total.
Movement on the leaderboard.
A different top three.
Suddenly the donation is not just a transaction between one person and a payment page.
It is part of the night.
That is the fundamental idea behind TAPiTAG Gamified Donations.
Most donation technology optimises the checkout. TAPiTAG optimises the room.
A Live Leaderboard People Actually Watched
The central screen displayed a live TAPiTAG fundraising dashboard throughout the campaign.
Guests could see which tables were in first, second and third position.
Other tables could see how close they were to climbing the rankings.
The total amount collected updated throughout the night.
A fundraising target showed how far the room still had to go.
A countdown clock added urgency as the campaign moved towards its close.
And because every physical TAPiTAG was associated with a particular table, the competition happened naturally between groups already sitting together.
This was not a leaderboard buried inside an organiser's admin dashboard.
It was deliberately put in front of the room.
That distinction matters.
The current TAPiTAG platform is built around real-time table or team rankings, a live event display and donation notifications rather than simply providing another static online fundraising page.
The Winning Table
As the donations built, so did the competition.
By the end of the campaign, the winning table included representatives from Leading Social, SOSU Cosmetics and Close Brothers Motor Finance.
Paysight finished second.
eDesk finished third.
It is a small detail, but an important one.
People were no longer only making individual donations.
They were contributing towards something their entire table could see.
A €20 donation could help close the gap.
A larger contribution could immediately change the leaderboard.
Someone could look at the screen, look back at their table and decide:
We're not finishing second.
That is exactly the behaviour the system is designed to enable.
Not pressure.
Not complicated fundraising mechanics.
Just a little friendly competition attached to something worthwhile.
The Fundraising Target Was No Longer an Announcement
Traditional fundraising targets often appear at the beginning or end of an event.
“We'd love to raise €10,000 tonight.”
Then everyone gets on with dinner.
The problem is that guests have very little sense of progress in between.
With a live system, the target becomes visible throughout the campaign.
€2,605 raised.
Then €4,000.
Then €7,000.
Then €10,000.
Every donation moves the room closer.
That changes a target from an abstract number into something people can watch.
The TAPiTAG screen used at the Awards included the live amount collected alongside the campaign target, allowing progress to remain visible during the event.
Instead of asking guests to remember the fundraising appeal, the event itself kept reminding them — visually and dynamically — that the campaign was still moving.
Custom Software, Not a Fundraising Page Dropped Into the Event
One of the things we care about with Gamified Donations is that the technology should not look like a third-party widget that has accidentally appeared in the middle of somebody else's event.
The 2026 experience was customised around the visual identity of the Irish eCommerce Awards and its partners.
That applied across the system.
The physical table tags.
The mobile donation experience.
The leaderboard.
The colours.
The event logos.
The live display.
The podium.
The target graphics.
The countdown.
The donation notifications.
From the guest's point of view, it felt like part of the Awards.
Not something bolted onto it.
That ability to combine custom physical products with a customised digital interface is central to the TAPiTAG approach.
One campaign. One brand. One experience from table to big screen.
And Then There Are the Prizes
Gamification does not have to stop at the leaderboard.
The TAPiTAG backend also allows an event organiser to add prizes to the campaign.
Donors can be entered into the appropriate prize draw as part of the fundraising experience.
Once the campaign has closed, the system can randomly select the winners from the eligible donor pool.
No spreadsheet.
No pulling names manually.
No organiser trying to work out whether every donor has been included.
The prize mechanic can sit alongside the main leaderboard competition:
Give to support the charity.
Help your table climb the rankings.
And potentially enter the draw.
For an event organiser, the entire process remains inside the same system.
Hardware and Software Have to Work Together
This is what makes Gamified Donations a little different from adding a QR code to an event programme.
The QR code itself is easy.
The hard part is everything around it.
The physical products have to be designed, printed, assigned and delivered.
Every table needs to connect to the correct campaign.
The mobile experience needs to work instantly.
The event branding needs to carry through.
The live leaderboard needs to update.
The large event screen needs to display the right information.
Donation notifications need to appear at the right moment.
Rankings have to change.
Targets have to update.
The campaign needs to be managed centrally.
And when the event finishes, the data needs to remain useful.
TAPiTAG combines these pieces into one system: custom NFC/QR hardware, mobile giving, a real-time donation dashboard, live event displays and campaign analytics.
The table tag gets somebody into the experience.
The software keeps the experience alive.
Three Years of Learning What Makes a Room Give
The 2026 system did not appear overnight.
The Irish eCommerce Awards has given us three years to see how people actually behave with donation technology in a live event environment.
Year One: Make Donating Easier
The first objective was friction.
Get the technology onto the tables.
Let guests tap or scan.
Get them onto a mobile donation journey quickly.
The result was approximately €7,000 raised.
A strong start.
But the donation was still largely an interaction between the individual donor and their phone.
Year Two: Prove the Behaviour
The same fundamental model returned.
People understood the interaction.
Tap.
Scan.
Donate.
The amount raised grew to approximately €9,000 — with €8,689 publicly reported as the on-the-night 2025 total.
But one major element was still missing.
The rest of the room could not really see what was happening.
Year Three: Make Giving Part of the Entertainment
That became the focus for 2026.
The live leaderboard came in.
So did the visible podium.
The donation notifications.
Confetti.
Campaign progress.
The countdown.
Real-time competition between tables.
The result:
€11,836 for Barnardos.
The highest total across the three years.
The Most Interesting Metric Isn't €11,836
The total matters.
Of course it does.
But from a product-development perspective, the more interesting lesson is what happened when the fundraising moved from being accessible to being visible.
Tap-to-donate solves one problem:
friction.
Gamified Donations tackles another:
engagement.
Those two things are very different.
Putting an NFC tag on a table means somebody can give quickly.
Putting the results on a 20-foot screen means the room can see the giving happening.
Adding rankings means tables have a reason to look again.
Adding a target means everybody knows how much further there is to go.
Adding notifications gives individual donations a moment of recognition.
Adding prizes creates another reason to participate.
The technology stops sitting quietly on the table.
It becomes part of the event production.
Why Gala Dinners Are Perfect for Gamified Donations
An awards dinner already has most of the ingredients needed.
Tables.
Big screens.
A captive audience.
Natural groups.
A host.
A stage.
Competitive energy.
And periods throughout the evening where fundraising can become part of the programme.
The technology does not need to manufacture an artificial community.
The community is already in the room.
TAPiTAG simply gives it a mechanism to participate together.
That makes the system particularly well suited to corporate charity nights, awards ceremonies, gala dinners, charity balls, school fundraisers and other table-based events. TAPiTAG's current platform is designed specifically around these kinds of live fundraising environments.
There Was No App to Explain
This is one of the pieces that sounds small until you picture hundreds of guests at dinner.
Imagine the MC having to say:
“Everyone take out your phone, go to the App Store, search for…”
You've already lost people.
The TAPiTAG interaction is deliberately shorter.
Tap the tag.
Or:
Scan the QR code.
The donation experience opens in the phone browser. TAPiTAG's current donation system is designed around browser-based tap-to-give rather than requiring guests to install an event donation app.
For a one-night event, that matters enormously.
Guests should be spending their time donating.
Not learning software.
The Real Result: Giving Became Visible
There is a photograph from the night that probably explains the system better than we can.
A phone is held up in the foreground.
On it is the TAPiTAG live leaderboard.
Behind it, out of focus, is the event itself.
That is the product in one image.
The physical event and the digital experience are no longer separate things.
The person at the table sees the same competition that is playing out on the large screen.
They donate.
The software reacts.
The room sees it.
Another table responds.
The total moves again.
Tap. Donate. Compete. Repeat.
And at the end of the night, what began as a QR code and NFC chip sitting quietly beside the glasses had helped facilitate €11,836 for Barnardos.
What We Learned From Three Years at the Irish eCommerce Awards
Our biggest takeaway is not that every charity event needs more technology.
It is almost the opposite.
The guest interaction has to become simpler.
The complexity belongs behind the scenes.
At the table:
Tap or scan.
On the phone:
Donate.
Everything else — table tracking, branding, live totals, notifications, rankings, targets, prize draws and reporting — happens in the platform.
That is what we have spent three years refining.
From approximately €7,000.
To approximately €9,000.
To €11,836.
And this year, for the first time, you could watch the fundraising momentum build in real time.
Gamified Donations Are Not About Making Charity a Game
That distinction matters.
The cause remains the reason people give.
The technology does not replace that.
What gamification can do is make the act of supporting that cause more visible, social and engaging inside an event.
Barnardos' work with vulnerable children and families is what gave the fundraising its purpose.
TAPiTAG's job was to make participating as easy — and as engaging — as possible.
The best fundraising technology should never become more important than the charity.
It should help more of the room act on the reason they wanted to give in the first place.
Bringing TAPiTAG Gamified Donations to Your Event
TAPiTAG Gamified Donations brings the physical and digital fundraising experience into one package.
Custom NFC + QR table products.
A branded mobile donation experience.
Real-time donation totals.
Live leaderboards.
Interactive donation announcements.
Confetti and milestones.
Countdowns and campaign targets.
First, second and third-place rankings.
Prize management and random winner selection.
Analytics and post-event reporting.
And a system that can be designed around the branding of your event rather than forcing your event to look like ours.
The Irish eCommerce Awards gave us the perfect environment to show what that can look like at scale.
Three years in, the result is clear:
The tags make donating easy.
The software makes people want to get involved.
And in 2026, that experience helped deliver €11,836 for Barnardos.
Ready to make fundraising part of the event?
Explore TAPiTAG Gamified Donations and see how NFC + QR hardware, live leaderboards and real-time fundraising software can work together at your next gala, awards night or corporate fundraiser. Explore TAPiTAG Gamified Donations
