ING to launch contactless charity collection boxes

ING has partnered with Dutch startup, Whydonate, to create a contactless charity collection box to help keep the charity sector innovative in a time when cash is being used less frequently.

According to ING, the box was created in only a matter of days, in collaboration with Whydonate at ING’s innovation lab ICEC. It will be introduced as a pilot in 2017 in the Netherlands.

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“The idea is perfect for charities wishing to embark on door-to-door fundraising, a method that has suffered a downturn in recent years. Recent studies by ING’s Economics Bureau show that 52 percent of consumers don’t usually keep cash in their house,” ING spokesperson said in a statement.

These figures are evidenced around the world, especially in the UK where contactless technology has prospered. According to the latest statistics (October 2016) from the UK Card Association, there are a total of 100.1m contactless cards in issue in the UK, which marks an increase of just under 30% over the year. In a single month of October, 312.6m contactless transactions were made, an increase of 13.6% on the previous month and 159.4% over the year.

Such a vibrant contactless network has led to charities to evolve, as demonstrated by the likes of Pennies, and contactless collection points in the Barbican.

“People are already increasingly comfortable with contactless transactions in a commercial environment and on the transit network in London, and so the transition to the charitable sector should be a natural one for many people,” Nick Adams, Barbican’s spokesperson, told PaymentEye at the time.

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