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The reality is that an the alternative system ( in addition to postal orders) is already in place. In the ‘old days’ cheques required a cheque guarantee card, which people were quite happy to use. My alternative proposed system would use this approach, except it is now called a debit card. It works as follows;
The donor sends a cheque to the charity, exactly as is done now.
- All the required information, including name and address details is written on the back of the cheque, exactly as is done now
- The donor also writes the 3 digit security number from the debit card on the back of the cheque.
- The donor now sends this cheque to the charity.
- This cheque is now treated exactly the same way as an appeal form on which the donor has made a donation using his debit card.
- The charity then retains the cheque as it would any other written instruction and the payment is made accordingly.
The bank never gets the cheque and so does not have any costs and the donor still makes their payment in exactly the same way. The charity must naturally be setup to take and process electronic payments and this can be done using systems such as EPDQ lite, which have a start cost of around £20 per month. And this can all be done immediately.
All that is now needed is for the major player and influencers ( IoF ACEVO, CFD, CTG, Nick Hurd’s office The Banks etc., ) to get together and implement this. Hopefully the issue will go away and charities will once more focus on the real objectives.
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