Trends in Spare Change Payments

When entire world moving towards cashless society, interestingly cash payments are used actively in charity donations. These 'spare the change' moments of public donations are of estimated ￡13.9 BILLION to charity in 2023, according to CFA of UK!

Introduction

A store cashier asks if you'd like to donate money to the local food bank. Or the PIN pad at the checkout counter prompts you to round up your payment for charity — spare a little change for a worthy cause.

Those "round-up" campaigns have become ubiquitous in recent years — at grocery chains, gas stations, retail stores and online merchants — and they rake in millions of dollars annually for everything from scholarships to cancer research.

Landscape

According to OPB, In 2022 alone, charities raised $749 million nationwide(USA) through so-called point-of-sale donations, a 24% jump from 2020, according to Engage for Good, which tracks this type of charitable giving. And that was just from campaigns that brought in $1 million or more. Although that figure was tiny compared to the nearly $500 billion in estimated charitable giving in 2022, total giving actually dropped that year.

Untapped Market of Personal Experience by Digital Payments

Those who are interested in making small amount of donations are preferred to be in coins and 20 pound notes across UK and there is no impact of digital payment tapping to those personal experiences so far!

Innovations in Spare Change Domain!

Actionaid is one of the leading path breakers in this 'spare change' world by bringing online payments. Similarly PennyAppeal is one of the notable campaign that has attracted this market in recent years:

How easy it is to integrate 'Spare the Change' Payment Model?

You can round up to the nearest 10p, 50p or ￡1 (so, for example, if your grocery shop comes to ￡16.33, that total could be rounded up to ￡16.40, ￡16.50 or ￡17.00, with the surplus going to charity)-these services can be built to get integrated via digital payment journeys in shortest timeframe.

Please do read my another article for engineers on creating services for charity services here:

Charity of My Choice

This is my most heart touching video of Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity which I love to pay online for the real cause of saving children's life :

Marketing campaigns are the best part of this charity, since I was happy in contributing to this charity by running 62K in a summer of 2022:

If you are interested, please visit GOSH to make an online donation today: https://www.gosh.org/

Small Change-Big Impact

Every donation ranging up to 20 pounds in 50% of the donations across UK and majority of the payments made for the cause of religious and children and animal welfare according to the survey!

Can the Twenty Pound Note be replaced by Digital Money?

"Although the country has moved away from cash for much of its spending, the amount that many people donate to charity appears to be ‘stuck’ at bank note denominations, with the most common donations being ￡20 (11% of donors), ￡10 (13% of donors), and ￡5 (8% of donors)" CFA Online Survey 2023

If ￡20 replaced by digital currency for the food banks, animal welfare, children support and religious events, it will be a great future to both 'digital money' and 'spare the change payments' in near future.

How would you donate to anyone and what is the preferable mode of payment?-please leave it in the comments.

Article Reference: https://www.cafonline.org/docs/default-source/about-us-research/uk_giving_report_2024_final.pdf?sfvrsn=8ac35647_2

Disclaimer: Contents, posts and media used in this account of the author do not represent any organisation of any sort. Under no circumstances will the author be held responsible or liable in any way for any claims, loss, expenses or liabilities whatsoever.

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