This past holiday season, bell ringers at The Salvation Army‘s traditional kettle donation sites were accompanied by a technology upgrade that gave shoppers a digital option for their 2019 donations. In addition to accepting spare change dropped into the familiar red kettles, the organization allowed shoppers to make donations via their smartphones, courtesy of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology or QR codes.
The Salvation Army has deployed NFC as part of the Kettle Pay system, with GoToTags NFC 13.56 MHz RFID tags compliant with the ISO 14443 standard on signs posted with the kettles. The system was first piloted in Seattle, Dallas, Kansas City and New York City, then rolled out across the country this holiday season. “This is the first time that smart chips and QR codes are being used nationwide, and The Salvation Army is seeing donations come through via the Kettle Pay option,” says David Jolley, the organization’s director of communications.
The Web-based solution was provided by technology integrator Clearscale, and was pre-encoded by GoToTags to more than 50,000 of its NFC tags. The goal was to enable spontaneous payments for shoppers who are increasingly reliant on phones and digital payments, and who may be less likely to carry cash.
The Salvation Army has been collecting charitable donations in the United States for 135 years, in order to benefit social services such as food for the hungry and clothing and shelter for the homeless. Its contributions serve approximately 5,000 communities nationwide. Last year, the organization rolled out a trial of Kettle Pay, its digital payment option, in select cities using QR codes to allow shoppers to make payments even if they weren’t carrying cash. People could use their smartphones to scan the QR code at the kettle’s sign and were directed to the payment site, where they could then select an amount and provide payment information.
However, the organization found that NFC technology could be more intuitive to use in a tap-to-pay method, and the NFC payment option was thus added, explains Asa Redfield, GoToTags’ marketing director. At the same time, The Salvation Army rolled out the Kettle Pay system to more payment sites around the country. “As America moves toward a cashless society,” Jolley says, “The Salvation Army is adapting to the changing landscape” by making it simpler to contribute.
“The Salvation Army introduced Kettle Pay to allow shoppers to give without cash for the first time, by simply tapping or scanning with their phone,” Redfield says, which heled to raise money to help people across the country, amounting to more than 23 million people annually. The organization needed the solution to be rolled out quickly, and it was taken live in November 2019. While ClearScale had developed the Kettle Pay system the year prior, GoToTags had just one month to produce more than 50,000 pre-encoded tags. ClearScale provided the payment solution, which is powered by Braintree with Amazon Web Services for Google Pay and Apple Pay.
Individuals wishing to make a donation could tap their NFC-enabled phone against the NFC tag built into the metal signage that was part of the Red Kettle unit. Users could then view donation options and select the amount they wished to donate from their Google Pay or Apple Pay account, or they could enter their own amount. The phone forwarded the tag’s NFC Data Exchange Format (NDEF) encoded ID, as an API request, to a server for Braintree-based payment authorization.
The payment app runs on AWS Lambda, a serverless computing platform. The system enabled Web content to be accessed via content delivery network Amazon CloudFront and a website-hosting bucket. An email receipt was sent directly to each individual’s phone, and the funds were distributed to local Salvation Army units based on the donor’s billing ZIP code.
The NFC tags provided by GoToTags consist of an on-metal NFC Sticky Token, which is attached via an adhesive backing. The round tag measures 30 millimeters (1.2 inches). The on-metal tag is designed to be effective around the metal signage or on the kettle if the tag is applied there, Redfield says, as well as being durable for outdoor winter weather. Each tag is encoded with a unique ID that includes an NFC Data Exchange Format (NDEF) uniform resource identifier (URI) to be compatible with both iOS- and Android-based devices. “Our goal is to make it easier to give back during the holiday season,” Jolley states.