Wednesday, December 22, 2021
Visa has been piloting a program with the Salvation Army to tap-and-go enable 2,000 Red Kettle stations across the East and West Coasts. With stations in places like Washington, DC, San Francisco, Sacramento and Southern California, Visa is also working with tiptap, a Canadian firm that builds NFC-enabled wireless devices for contactless giving applications.
Contactless payments – using contactless cards and mobile devices – have rapidly grown over the past 20 months, propelled by the Covid-19 pandemic. A 2020 Mastercard survey found better than half of Americans (51 percent) use some form of contactless payment. That same survey found half worry about the cleanliness of signature touch pads, and 72 percent prefer to skip signatures altogether.
Visa reports its network’s contactless payments have doubled between mid-2020 and mid-2021 and more than 400 million U.S. Visa-branded contactless cards are in circulation. In addition, a 2020 Forrester Research report revealed nearly six in 10 (59 percent) retailers were accepting contactless card payments, with 56 percent accepting contactless payments initiated on mobile devices.
Over the past year, both Visa and Mastercard have amped up efforts to bring contactless payment acceptance to small and micro-businesses, through technologies like Tap to Phone (Visa) and Tap on Phone (Mastercard). The technologies allow these merchants to accept contactless payments on their smartphones with a simple tap of a customer’s contactless-enabled card or mobile wallet.
“Tapping to pay has become an integral part of everyday life, especially over the last two years,” said Kimberly Lawrence, head of U.S. at Visa. The holiday season presents a “tremendous opportunity” to incorporate touchless payments into charitable collections, Lawrence said. “Now, giving back to your local community through one of the most recognizable charitable holiday campaigns is as simple as a tap,” she added.
The Salvation Army is the nation’s largest private-sector provider of social services. Its Red Kettle campaign is vital source of holiday giving, with all donations used in the local communities where they are collected. In 2020, the Red Kettle campaign generated $120 million in donations, the Salvation Army reported.
This year, the Salvation Army estimates it needs to collect $175 million to help needy Americans, and it hopes contactless payments will help make that a reality. Salvation Army data indicates 62 percent of Americans have been living paycheck-to-paycheck since the pandemic began, hence the need for the larger collection goal.
“We want to make it as easy as possible for people to support their local communities,” said Major Darren Norton, divisional commander for the Salvation Army’s Golden State Division, based in San Francisco.
While the pilot marks a first for Red Kettle donations in the U.S., it’s not the Salvation Army’s first foray into the world of contactless payments. The firm tiptap has been working with the Visa and the Salvation Army in Canada for the last three years to facilitate contactless Red Kettle donations.
“As people carry less and less cash in their pockets, it’s crucial for charities and community organizations that rely heavily on in-person donations to provide a safe, secure and easy way for people to give,” said Chris Greenfield, founder and CEO of tiptap.
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