Salvation Army Red Kettle

NFC Chips Enhance Salvation Army’s Red Kettle Christmas Campaign

Christmas 2019 saw The Salvation Army USA update their fundraising campaign to include digital donations by adding NFC chips to their iconic Red Kettles. This meant that all shoppers had to do was tap their NFC enabled smartphone to make a donation to the charity.  

Fundraisers across the USA were provided with NFC tags and stickers which were printed with a QR code along with the Apple Pay and Google Pay logos. These stickers could then easily be attached to their Red Kettles that everyone knows and loves.

Gone are the days of saying ‘sorry, no change’ when these smart stickers are around. The many people who would happily donate but just don’t have the cash were then able to make a donation using their smartphone – Easy peasy! By tapping the tag or scanning the code, their phone would automatically open a custom Salvation Army donation page. They could then choose how much they wanted to donate and use Apple Pay or Google Pay to complete their payment.

Based on the donor’s billing ZIP code, the digital donations made through ‘Kettle Pay’ were automatically distributed to their local Salvation Army unit and followed up with an email receipt sent directly to their phone.

Click below to watch a video from The Salvation Army showing just how Kettle Pay works:

Even here in the UK we’re familiar with The Red Kettle Campaign. It is now in its 129th year and The Salvation Army is recognised for one of the oldest and largest charitable campaigns in the world.

The money goes to such worthwhile causes – The millions of dollars raised from the campaign goes towards toys for children at Christmas, clothes and shelter for the homeless, food for the hungry and so much more.

It’s fantastic to see such a huge and well-established charitable campaign grab the opportunity of digital donations, and in doing so raising more money for America’s most vulnerable citizens.

NFC technology through the use of smart stickers for digital donations is a huge opportunity for charitable organisations everywhere – The potential for increasing donations is huge. We’re excited to see what 2020 will bring for our smart stickers here at Donater.

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