This story has been updated from its original version.
A social initiative from the British government to encourage citizens to take a more active role in their communities, among other proposals, now includes a plan to enable charitable donations through ATMs.
The plan falls in line with British consumers’ tendencies to make spontaneous, small charitable donations, says one observer.
“Having an option to donate at the ATM is a logical extension of the current practice,” says Megan Bramlette, director of knowledge at Auriemma Consulting Group in New York. Bramlette has spent time working in the company’s London office.
Link, which is the country’s ATM network and switch, and government officials agreed May 23 to enable debit and ATM cardholders to make donations at some 63,000 machines in the United Kingdom starting next year. The British government originally proposed the idea in December.
The two parties are still discussing the plan’s specific details, but ATM operators will determine whether to offer charity donations at a particular machine and which charities appear as choices, Link noted in a press release.
The UK Payments Administration Ltd., a service company providing individuals, facilities and expertise to the UK payments industry, wants local, national and international organizations to get fair representation as choices, according to an organization spokesperson.
“What we don’t want is any particular charity to be disadvantaged,” the spokesperson tells PaymentsSource. “We don’t want to have 10 charities that never change.”
ATM operators will provide software updates to enable the option at machines, he says.
NCR Corp., which has a strong presence in the UK, tells PaymentsSource in a statement its services division will be able to “make the necessary software updates as UK banks, building societies and cash-machine operators decide to roll out this service on the ATM networks it supports.”
The UK initiative also will not affect Diebold Inc. at this point in time, company spokesperson Michael Jacobsen noted in an e-mail.
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.
Indeed, enabling charitable donations at ATMs is not a new concept. Wells Fargo & Co. enabled donations at some 12,000 machines in the United States 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 says.
A recent consumer survey in the UK helped convince the government and ATM operators to add a donation option.
Some 29% of respondents ages 18 to 24 who used an ATM at least once per month said they would always make a 10 pence (16 U.S. cents or 11 euro cents) donation if the option were available. Some 47% of respondents in that age group said they would donate between 10 pence and £1 often.
YouGov PLC conducted the online survey of 2,094 UK adults in January.
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