About Giftwise

Giftwise helps friends and family give to someone who receives SSI in the way that keeps her full benefits.

What it does

Social Security counts cash gifts as income, but not payments made straight to a shop for her needs. Giftwise checks every gift against those rules and pays the shop directly through PayPal, so the help arrives and her check stays the same.

Every answer shows the rule it comes from. Fixed rules do the money math; AI reads documents and explains.

How much each payee gets, the check, when money moves and who gets paid are decided by code, never by the AI. What the AI never decides

Two technicians repairing a wheelchair tyre — A wheelchair repair paid straight to the shop is not counted as income.

Scope

Guidance based on published Social Security rules, with sources. For complex situations, such as couples, state supplements or Medicaid rules that differ by state, a benefits counselor can help.
Uses the federal amounts for the year each check is paid: 2026, and 2027 from January. Federal SSI only; a state’s own supplement is added on top by that state.
Runs in PayPal’s sandbox, a practice version of PayPal where no real money moves.
The household on the sample pages, Maya, and the shops are fictional.

A year of gifts, run for real

Maya’s sample year is 43 gifts from family and friends, $6,328 in all, and every one keeps her check whole. Outside PayPal’s sandbox, the money would move like this.

$3,519Paid to shops and clinics through PayPal (28 gifts)
$2,724Paid to her ABLE account through the ABLE plan’s own gift page (14 gifts)
$85Given as the item itself, a jacket, so no money moves (1 gift)

Each gift runs through the rules engine; the gifts are the ones on the dashboard and in her reports.

Of Maya’s sample year, $6,328 in 43 gifts, PayPal carries $3,519 (28 gifts): everything paid to a shop or a clinic, in one checkout for each giver. The $2,724 (14 gifts) for her ABLE account goes through her ABLE plan’s own gift page, because each plan takes gifts its own way (a gift link or a Ugift code); Giftwise works out that amount the same way and sends the giver there. The other $85 is a jacket given as itself. How this works for real

Why not pay the shop yourself?

For one repair from one giver, paying the shop works, and it is what Giftwise does. A year of help from 6 people across 14 needs is where one shared page adds the rest. Measured on Maya’s sample year, each of its 43 gifts priced by the rules engine both ways:

Housing help: 11 of the 43 gifts ($2,124) were rent or a utility bill. Paid straight to the landlord or the utility, help with housing still lowers her check; Giftwise sends it through her ABLE account instead.
Gifts with no shop: 3 gifts ($600) were savings, with no shop behind them. Given on their own, they arrive as cash.
Her check: Each giver paying on their own, the engine lowers 10 of her monthly checks, $1,747.33 in all. With one shared page, every check stays whole.
The report: 10 months with income or housing help to tell Social Security about, against 0 with Giftwise, which writes the report either way.

payItYourself() in src/lib/impact.ts runs the same gifts through the engine, once as each giver would pay alone and once routed by Giftwise.

The full answer, with ABLE’s yearly limit and PayPal’s ten recipients

Who it reaches

7.4 million people, for items, care and school: Paying the shop, the clinic, the pharmacy or the school keeps the check whole for everyone on SSI, whatever their age or when their disability began: all 7.4 million people receiving SSI in January 2025 (CRS IF10482, from SSA’s Monthly Statistical Snapshot). A wheelchair repair, medicine, a laptop for school or a coat: none of it counts, by any route that pays the seller.
Rent and utilities, through ABLE: Help with housing counts even when paid straight to the landlord, so the engine sends it through an ABLE account, which needs blindness or a disability that began before age 46 (POMS SI 01130.740). That covers all 1.0 million children on SSI, and the adults and people 65 or older whose condition began before 46; SSA counts recipients by age rather than by when a disability began, so the adult share is a range. The ABLE National Resource Center estimates about 8 million people were potentially eligible under the original law and an estimated 6 million more since January 1, 2026 (ABLE Case Summary, October 2025).
Rent without ABLE, capped: For someone who cannot have an ABLE account, family help with rent still lowers the check, by at most the presumed maximum value less the $20 general exclusion. Measured on $800 of rent paid by family: the June 2026 check is $662.67 of $994, $331.33 lower; through ABLE it stays $994; the January 2027 check is $686 of $1,029, $343 lower; through ABLE it stays $1,029. Giftwise says so before anyone pays, and sends the rest of the help to the needs that reach everyone.
Never to ABLE without eligibility: Money goes to an ABLE account only for someone who can have one, a promise held on all 100,000 random gifts; for everyone else, each need is paid at its shop.

How this works for real

This demo runs in PayPal's sandbox. Here is what changes when real money moves, and the documents each answer comes from.

Does every shop need a PayPal account?

Yes, a PayPal business account, because PayPal pays the shop directly and Giftwise never holds the money. In this demo the shops are PayPal sandbox accounts. For real, Giftwise would send each new shop a PayPal sign-up link. The shop signs up, or links the business account it already has, in PayPal's own flow, and PayPal hands back the shop's merchant ID. Every order then names that merchant ID as the payee, so a gift can only go to a shop that finished PayPal's sign-up.

Partner Referrals API: POST /v2/customer/partner-referrals returns an action_url for the shop, and PayPal's return URL carries merchantIdInPayPal. Orders v2 then sets purchase_units[].payee.merchant_id in place of the sandbox email_address. This sandbox app's call returns 403 NOT_AUTHORIZED (November 8, 2026, scripts/partner-referrals-probe.ts): PayPal opens the API once it approves the platform as a partner.

Sources: PayPal Developer: Onboard sellers before payment (Partner Referrals API), PayPal Developer: Pay another account (the payee object), PayPal Developer: Multiparty platforms, including partner fees

What if the shop does not take PayPal?

Two routes still keep the check whole. If the person has an ABLE account and the need is a disability expense, which covers housing, education, transportation, health, assistive technology and more, the gift goes to the ABLE account and the person pays the shop from it. When an organization pays with PayPal Payouts, a shop without PayPal gets an email to claim the money. If nobody claims it within 30 days, PayPal returns it to the organization, not to the person, so it never becomes the person's income.

R-ABLE-01 routes the gift to the ABLE account (POMS SI 01130.740). Qualified disability expenses: IRC 529A(e)(5), listed in IRS Tax Tip 2022-112. Payouts: an item to an unregistered recipient stays UNCLAIMED and returns to the sender after 30 days.

Sources: IRS Tax Tip 2022-112, POMS SI 01130.740, PayPal Developer: Payouts payment processing (unclaimed payouts)

How does money get into an ABLE account?

Through the ABLE plan's own gift page. Anyone can give to an ABLE account. ABLEnow and IAble give each account owner a Ugift code to share; STABLE, CalABLE and ABLE United give each account its own gift link. In this demo the ABLE account is a PayPal sandbox account, so one checkout covers everything. For real, Giftwise would work out the ABLE amount the same way and send the giver to the plan's gift page for that part, while the shops are still paid through PayPal.

Ugift: the giver enters the code at UgiftABLE.com, then pays by electronic funds transfer or check. ABLEnow and ABLE United both list $20,000 a year from all sources for 2026, the limit the rules engine already flags (R-ABLE-01).

Sources: IAble: Give a gift with a Ugift code, ABLEnow: Contributions, STABLE: Gifting, ABLE United: Gifting, POMS SI 01130.740

When can an ABLE gift be spent?

Some plans wait before a gift can be taken out: STABLE and CalABLE hold gifts made through a gift page for 10 business days. So rent or utility help sent through an ABLE account works best about two weeks before the bill is due. Money taken out for housing should be paid out in the same month; kept into the next month, it counts toward the $2,000 savings limit.

STABLE and CalABLE gifting pages: gift contributions made through an online gifting page "will not be available for withdrawal for 10 business days." R-ABLE-02: POMS SI 01130.740 counts a housing distribution kept into the month after it is received as a resource.

Sources: STABLE: Gifting, CalABLE: Gifting, POMS SI 01130.740, POMS SI 01110.003

Who pays the fees?

The giver pays the gift amount and nothing more: PayPal charges US buyers no fee when no currency conversion is involved, and Ugift is free to use. The shop pays PayPal's usual fee for receiving a payment, as it would for any PayPal sale. This demo adds nothing on top. A platform on PayPal's partner program can add its own fee to each order, which the shop sees as partner commissions, so Giftwise could cover its costs without charging the giver or the person on SSI.

Partner fees are set per purchase unit in purchase_units[].payment_instruction.platform_fees on the Orders v2 create call. PayPal does not support platform fees for first-party integrations, so this needs the partner onboarding above.

Sources: PayPal: Consumer fees (buying in the US), PayPal: Merchant fees (receiving payments), IAble: Give a gift with a Ugift code, PayPal Developer: Multiparty platforms, including partner fees

Your data

Bills and pages you try are used only to show your result. Images are re-encoded to remove location data before they are read.
Giftwise never holds money. Donors pay the shop directly through PayPal, and the ABLE share through the ABLE plan’s own gift page.
Every payment step is written down in order and can’t be changed later (an append-only ledger with a hash chain).

Open source

Giftwise is open source under the MIT license. See how it is built and the sources.