Coverage that we’ve have come across indicates the some 80% of shop transactions are no longer made with cash, so you need to have a plan in place to handle this new reality. We see a number of possibilities as to how to handle this and there may be others.

Similar to the way tips are sometimes collected in a coffee shop you could use a small terminal to “beep” the donation. The ones that I have seem have a cost of around €70 per unit plus transaction costs.

We have seen QR codes used to take a donor to the charities donation page and they can be used but are time consuming but have near zero cost. As donors are directed to the charity website recurring donations options are possible. There is generally a processing charge for donations.

The model that we are favouring comes from Cents and consists of an app on the collectors mobile phone and through which the NFC on the card is read and the donation made after the donation amount is selected. There is a transaction cost.

Only the QR code model allows for recurring donations and capturing of additional contact details so there is a trade off.

Something else we should chat about.