About
A better answer than a shrug and a Venmo handle
Leaf a Tip is a tipping platform for people whose work doesn’t come with a card reader — guides, educators, event staff, and anyone else who gets asked “can I tip you?” and has to figure out an answer on the spot.
Why it exists
Plenty of service work runs on tips. Not all of it runs on the tools built for tips. If you work behind a counter there’s a terminal that prompts for 18/20/22%. If you spend three hours walking a group through something you know well, there is usually nothing — and the person who wants to thank you has to dig for cash that fewer and fewer people carry.
What tends to fill that gap is a handle scribbled on a receipt, or a name half-heard and mistyped into an app later. It works often enough that nobody fixes it, and fails often enough to be worth fixing.
The guides kept getting asked “can I tip you?” and the answer was a shrug and a Venmo handle. This is the better answer.
How it works
The whole design follows from one decision: separate paying from tipping. You load a balance once, then tipping is instant and free of card machinery for the rest of the night.
Buy credit once
Pick a pack and pay for it with a card. This is the only time a card is involved — everything after this spends the balance you already bought.
Go do the thing
Take the tour, sit the class, get the service. Leaf a Tip stays out of the way until you actually want to use it.
Scan their code or open their link
Every person on Leaf a Tip has a page at leafatip.com/theirname. Scanning a code opens it in your browser — there is no app to install, and no account needed to look.
Pick an amount and send
Choose a tier or enter your own, add a note if you want. Your balance goes down, their balance goes up, and no card is charged.
They cash out when they want
Money sits in their own account until they move it to their bank. They decide when, not us.
What it costs
Tips arrive in full. We take nothing out of a tip. Send $5 and $5 lands — not $4.50 after a service fee.
We make money on the way in instead. Every $5 of credit you buy carries one Low Five — $1 — added on top and kept by us. It’s on the purchase page before you pay and itemized on your receipt after.
That is the entire business model. No subscription, no listing fee, nothing charged to the people receiving tips, and no percentage quietly shaved off the top. We would rather be visibly paid once than invisibly paid forever.
How we decide things
- Your card gets touched as little as possible. Tipping four people in one evening should not put four charges on your statement. That is why credit is prepaid.
- Every number is shown before you commit. The markup, the tip limits ($5 to $50), what lands on the other side. Surprises belong in the tip, not the fee schedule.
- Receiving money should be boring. No application to be accepted, no minimum payout threshold, no waiting for us to decide you’re worth paying. Set up a page, verify who you are, get paid.
- We do not sell anything about you. No advertising, no trackers, no data brokered to anyone. The Low Five is the whole revenue model precisely so it doesn’t have to be.
Get started
Buy a pack to start tipping, or set up a page so people can tip you.
Questions we haven’t answered here: hello@leafatip.com