A social initiative from the British government now includes a plan to enable charitable donations through automated teller machines.
Link, the country's ATM network and switch, and government officials agreed Monday to enable debit and ATM cardholders to make donations at 63,000 machines in the U.K. starting next year. The British government proposed the idea in December.
The plan recognizes the tendency among the British to make spontaneous, small charitable donations, an observer said.
"Having an option to donate at the ATM is a logical extension of the current practice," said Megan Bramlette, director of knowledge at Auriemma Consulting Group in New York. Bramlette has worked in Auriemma's London office.
Link and the government are still discussing the plan's details, but ATM operators will determine whether to offer charity donations at a particular machine and which charities appear as choices, Link said in a press release.
The UK Payments Administration Ltd., a service company providing facilities and expertise to the U.K. payments industry, said it wants local, national and international organizations to get fair representation, according to an organization spokesman.
"What we don't want is any particular charity to be disadvantaged," the spokesman said. "We don't want to have 10 charities that never change."
ATM operators will provide software updates to enable the option at machines, he said.
NCR Corp., which has a strong presence in the U.K., said its services division will be able to "make the necessary software updates as U.K. banks, building societies and cash-machine operators decide to roll out this service on the ATM networks it supports."
The U.K. initiative also will not affect Diebold Inc. at this point in time, company spokesperson Michael Jacobsen said in an email.
Diebold already is supporting charitable transactions conducted at its ATMs in Italy, Jacobsen said. Each year, Diebold's Agilis software enables consumers in Italy at Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, which is part of the Banque Nationale de Paris and Paribas Group, to make charitable transactions at the bank's Diebold ATMs for a local fundraising telethon, he said.
Enabling charitable donations at ATMs is not a new concept. Wells Fargo & Co. enabled donations at roughly 12,000 machines in the U.S. after the March 1 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The initiative helped raise $1 million in about 10 days.
Charitable donations are not "why you go to the ATM, but in reaction to a [natural disaster] this could generate traffic," Bramlette said.
A recent consumer survey in the U.K. helped persuade the government and ATM operators to add a donation option. Twenty-nine percent of respondents ages 18 to 24 who used an ATM at least once a month said they would always make a 16-cent donation if the option were available. Roughly 47% in that age group said they would donate 16 cents to $1.61 often. YouGov PLC conducted the online survey of 2,094 U.K. adults in January.
