Other texting relief efforts sponsored by the Clinton Foundation and musician Wyclef Jean are also underway. Officials from those groups could not be reached to comment. The calls for texting the word "Yele" to 501501 while the calls for texting "Haiti" to 20222.

Housman said the Red Cross will be evaluating other ways to use texting to raise funds in the future, perhaps by adding programs for $1 or $20 donations. Since the Haiti earthquake, phone and Web and texting contributions totaled $37 million, she said.

Kevin Burden, a mobile phone analyst for ABI Research Inc., said the $8 million collected by the Red Cross in less than three days is "just huge" and showed the value of simple donation processes.

"It's an easy way to make a transaction, and people don't even have to use a credit card online or even pull out $10 in cash," he noted. The outpouring of support for the Red Cross indicates an "extension of our comfort level of using the phone to actually pay for something."

But Burden added that the texting payment system could have limits. "I don't expect people would pay a gym membership every month by phone," he said. "This is a one shot thing to donate to Haiti. An impulse donation like this makes sense."