UK cash machine network Link plans to enable users to make charitable donations from any of its 64,500 nationwide ATM sites before the end of the year.
The country’s banks, building societies and cash machine operators have unanimously agreed to work together on the scheme, which will be accessible by owners of the 100 million Link-enabled cards in circulation – almost every debit and ATM-only card issued in the UK – at any of its cash machines nationwide.
A spokesman for Link told civilsociety.co.uk: “The programme will certainly be launched this year – we hope in time for the Giving Summit at Downing Street on 8 May.
“A lot of the specifics will be up to the individual ATM operator: they will give the customer their choice of charities, ranging from international to local, as well as setting limits for donation, although there will be a universal minimum of £1," he said, adding however that "it will be up to each individual cash-machine operator whether they wish to include a ‘donations’ menu at all".
Which specific charities are going to be taking part in the scheme is also still to be announced, but the spokesperson speculated that it is likely that any organisations already associated with a major banking chain are likely to be included as part of that particular brand’s donor options.
ATM operator Bank Machine, a member of Link and operator of 3,500 cash machines across the UK, was one of the first operators to start engaging with charities about the new scheme in November last year, and saw hundreds of charities register their interest.
Background to ATM giving
The concept of ATM giving was originally proposed in the government’s Giving Green Paper in December 2010, which referenced the existing Colombian system of ATM giving and called on UK banks and ATM providers to figure out how to make this happen in this country.
This call led to a roundtable on 15 March 2011 between the Cabinet Office, Link, the ATM operators’ consortium, several of the major banks and independent ATM operators to discuss the issues and explore the feasibility and possibility of introducing charitable giving at ATMs in the UK.
Soon after, in May 2011, the Giving White Paper was released, which specifically mentioned Link as a case study and went into further detail.
Link cash withdrawals can exceed £10bn per month in value and at its busiest the company processes over one million transactions an hour.
