20 June 2011: Secure payment provider The Logic Group today announces that through Pennies, the electronic charity box, its existing and new clients can offer consumers the opportunity to donate small change at the Point of Sale when paying by card. In doing so clients can also significantly magnify their own corporate responsibility impact by choosing the charities to benefit from the majority of the funds raised.
Pennies is operated by registered charity, The Pennies Foundation, and is independent of charity, cause and channel. Three retailers are already live and more are planning to follow. To date more than 476,000 consumer donations have been made raising over £110,000. Pennies was included as a case study of a successful micro-donation scheme in the Government’s recent White Paper, entitled ‘Giving’.
The Logic Group, which is providing the payments software within the Point of Sale (POS) and Pin Entry Device (PED), is making the service available to all of its retail customers either on existing or forthcoming PCI DSS compliant payment solutions. This means that top retailers with an enabled PED can present customers with a donation screen and capture the donation data; essentially a product Stock-Keeping Unit (SKU), readily accommodated in most retailer processes.
Capturing the contribution as a ‘SKU’ also means that donations can be easily identified and settled directly with The Pennies Foundation. The Foundation then distributes the money to the selected charities and obtains feedback over time on how the money is used which t
he retailer can use to further engage consumers.
Crucially, Pennies does not require cashiers to ask the consumer to contribute – making the offering entirely non-intrusive. Customers are simply prompted on the PED, with no direct staff involvement in the giving process.
“As soon as we were approached by Pennies, we took immediate steps to enable the inventive charity approach it delivers for our customers,” comments Paul Russell, Senior Solutions Marketing Manager at The Logic Group. “The development work has been completed and we’re looking at going live from the end of June this year. We hope that Pennies will see a significant boost in participating retailers and charity donations as a result. Times are tough for charities and research shows that the majority of consumers are receptive to donating electronic small change in this way. As cards become increasingly the de facto means of payment, the kind of spare cash that charities have typically collected in cash collection tins is decreasing.”
About The Pennies Foundation (www.pennies.org.uk)
The Pennies Foundation is a registered charity which aims to support a range of UK charities of all sizes with small change donations collected through Pennies, the electronic charity box. Consumers are able to round-up to the nearest pound or in some retailers top-up by a specified number of pennies when paying by card. Pennies operates successfully both in-store and online.
The retailer nominates where the majority of funds are distributed, displaying which charities will benefit at the Point of Sale. The Pennies Foundation communicates which retailers provide the option to donate, distributes the funds to agreed beneficiaries, features the aggregate totals collected and which charities have benefitted and how.
Charities that are currently involved include: Alzheimer’s Society, Carers UK, The Children’s Burns Trust, Children’s Hospices UK, KidsOut, MacMillan Cancer Support, NSPCC, RNIB, Shelter, Special Olympics Great Britain, The Prince’s Trust and Youth Music.
Pennies won the Technology4Good Fundraising award in June 2011.
Contact for The Pennies Foundation
Hilary McVitty/Liz Kearsley
Media.relations@pennies.org.uk
02076009286