It's the most legitimate question to ask: if money is being paid back to you on your purchases, someone has to be paying for it. The answer comes down to one word: affiliation.
Affiliate marketing, a classic advertising mechanism
For years, brands have paid commissions to sites or apps that bring them customers. It's the same principle as an influencer sharing a discount link, or a price comparison site earning a commission when you buy through it. This commission already exists in retailers' marketing budgets, whether a cashback intermediary is involved or not.
A cashback platform like PayHope positions itself within this existing flow: when you buy through the app, from a partner retailer, that retailer pays an affiliate commission. Rather than keeping that commission entirely, the platform pays part of it back to you, the user, as cashback.
Why it isn't you who's paying
The price shown at the partner retailer stays the same, whether you go through a cashback app or not. The affiliate commission is already built into the brand's commercial strategy, funded by its customer-acquisition budget, not by a markup on the price you pay.
At PayHope, that same commission funds both your cashback and the contribution to a charitable cause. Both exist thanks to the same mechanism, at no additional cost to you or to the partner retailer.