During Covid, contactless has become the prefered way of paying by card. Charities, big and small, are embracing contactless as a donation method but are missing out on millions of pounds in Gift Aid1 every year.
It’s estimated, contactless could help charities collect £1.8bn in donations per year in the UK within the next 5-7 years, this means contactless donations have the potential to raise hundreds of millions for charities in Gift Aid alone every year. In order to make Gift Aid on contactless a possibility, a link between a donation and the individual opting to add Gift Aid needs to happen.
A small change to make a big difference
In order to link a donation to the donor and facilitate Gift Aid, merchant acquirers and payment processors need to turn on PAR (Payment Account References) as mandated by Visa Core Rule 7.10.1.1 (See page 520 - Visa Core Rules). The work involved is small but the impact is massive.
Everything else is in place
Streeva created Swiftaid to automate Gift Aid on charitable donations. The solution was developed with the help of public funding from Innovate UK and was created working closely with HMRC, Visa and the University of Surrey. Swiftaid demonstrated the automatic addition of Gift Aid to contactless donations in 2018 alongside Visa, GoodBox and the Natural History Museum and obtained sign off from HMRC in January 2019. This year, millions of donors will be primed to automate Gift Aid on contactless through Swiftaid’s imminent integrations with major fundraising platforms.
Each day PAR remains unavailable costs charities thousands in income.
If you or someone you know can help PAR become enabled within the payment organisations, please act now. For more information contact: info@swiftaid.co.uk
Gift Aid is a UK tax benefit for charities that increases each donation from UK taxpayers by 25% without costing the taxpayer any extra. ↩︎
