How fundraising changes in the cashless age

The era of the charity collection tin may soon become a distant memory. An increasingly cashless society has led to a new raft of innovative, digital giving options, which, for some charities, may have displaced more traditional forms of fundraising in their giving portfolio. 

For example, a report released in 2025 by fundraising platform Enthuse found that three in five donations are now made online.  

This prevalence in digital giving is unsurprising given only a minority of people regularly use notes and coins, according to UK Finance. It found that just  one in eight payments in the UK were made using cash in 2023, when 22 million people said they barely used cash on a monthly basis. 

A decade ago more than half of all payments were made with cash, adds the banking body, forecasting that by 2032 only one in 14 payments will involve notes and coins.  

Here, we look at some of the ways charities are using technology to ensure they are adapting to this increasingly cashless society.

Digital collection tins  

Collection tins and boxes were once a staple part of shop counters, for customers to give their change to good causes.  

In a cashless age this principle of giving loose change remains, but charities are having to adapt.  

This is necessary not just to cater for those paying digitally in store but also for the increasing number of people paying online.  In 2025, one in four retail sales were online, compared to one in ten in 2015.  

Charity partnerships with supermarkets are helping create modern, digital collection tins. For example, during 2024 Tesco customers donated over £500,000 to good causes through rounding up at the till fundraising. This included a weeklong campaign in August 2025 for its food poverty charity partners FareShare and Trussell.   

Another supermarket involved in digital giving is Lidl, which ran a six-week fundraiser in 2025 for children’s charity NSPCC using the Pennies digital micro donation system. This saw customers donate up to 30p a transaction to the charity when they paid for their shopping.  

QR codes 

Ease of use is another driver of the cashless trend, with people able to pay simply through a tap of their watch, phone, or bank card.  

This can be made even simpler through QR codes, which supporters can scan and then be taken to link showing how they can donate directly and discover more about the charity.  

Among the most innovative uses of QR codes was a link up in 2025 between hygiene charity InKind Direct and Bluewater Shopping Centre, where immersive posters promoting the charity were displayed in the centre’s public toilets. These broadcasted the voices of children who do not have access to essentials such as toothpaste and included a QR code for shoppers to find out more including how to donate.  

Near Field Communication (Contactless) 

Officially invented in 1983, Near Field Communication (NFC) offers another innovative way for charities to adapt their fundraising to a cashless age. 

This short-range form of wireless technology allows two devices to communicate when they are near to each other and can be used contactless payments and to exchange data. 

Ways charities are using NFC tags include on merchandise, worn by face-to-face fundraisers or placed in charity shops and venues. They allow supporters to tap their phone onto a NFC-enabled device or item, to direct them to charity websites and ways to donate.  

This technology has transformed giving to Big Issue vendors, who are being provided with NFC-enabled phones to take cashless payments directly from customers without the need for an additional card reader. Meanwhile, Oxfam has used NFC on posters and wristbands. 

Another charity to use this technology is greyhound rescue and rehoming charity Forever Hounds Trust, which created toy dogs with NFC tags to allow supporters to instantly donate.  

Voice assistants 

Voice-activated technology, such as through Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant smart speakers, continues to increase in popularity in the UK and is already being deployed by charities to accept cashless donations.  

To highlight the technology’s growth, three in five UK homes had a smart speaker in 2023, compared to around one in five in 2020.  

An early adopter of smart speaker cashless giving has been the British Heart Foundation which collects donations through Alexa. Using this, donors can download a ‘skill’ to the Amazon device’s app to enable direct payment to the charity through Amazon Pay. 

Other charities to enable donations through Alexa include NSPCC, RSPCA, RNIB, Crisis, and Macmillan Cancer Support.  

Social media 

Another innovation allowing people to donate digitally is through social media platforms. 

For example, Instagram gives its users the chance to create Stories that last for 24 hours. Charities can deploy these for fundraising by adding donation ‘stickers’ to content to create day long fundraising campaigns. 

Similar donation stickers can be added to videos and profiles on TikTok. The first charities to use these stickers on the platform were The British Red Cross and Help Musicians in April 2020. 

Meanwhile, crowdfunding platform GoFundMe launched a partnership with Instagram and Facebook owner Meta in 2024 to better integrate fundraising on the platform with social media. This includes improved ways to share and ensure supporters use donate buttons.