Pennies, the electronic charity box, announces partnership with Commidea

This article is brought to you by Retail Technology Review: Pennies, the electronic charity box, announces partnership with Commidea.

Commidea is the latest technology provider to get behind Pennies, the electronic charity box. Commidea, the UK's leading managed service payments provider and part of the Point Group, has updated the Ocius Sentinel solution to allow its retail partners to adopt micro-donations through Pennies. This new development will make it easier for more retailers to implement Pennies across a range of distribution channels.

The announcement comes as Pennies reaches its one millionth micro-donation in just 12 months, proving its popularity with consumers. Pennies is a new channel for an old habit dropping a few coins in a charity box on a shop counter brought up to date to give consumers the choice to round up their bills when they pay by card. Commidea is enabling retailers to help even more customers donate their 'spare change' to charity via their credit or debit cards.

Ian Rutland, Managing Director at Commidea, commented, "We are delighted to be part of the Pennies community and are looking forward to shortly being able to announce the first retailers to implement our Pennies solution. We are finalising our preparations for the roll-out of this exciting new addition to our range of services which will allow cardholders to donate to pennies with just the touch of a button."

Alison Hutchinson concluded: "One million donations in the first year? Let's make it millions more next year! With the help of our new technology partners, we believe that 2012 could mark a real step forward in micro-donations, enabling even more retailers to join the Pennies movement!"

Commidea joins YESPay, The Logic Group and IBM as payment solution providers which are already offering retailers Pennies functionality.

Pennies currently has 5 retail partners, whose customers have raised over 250,000 for more than 20 UK charities. These retailers include Domino's Pizza, Zizzi and the Entertainer. Pennies has also announced a host of new retailers that are committed to go live with Pennies in early 2012. These include Screwfix, Shelter, Meatballs, GO Outdoors, Barracudas and BuySpares.