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Achisomoch Blog

Scan and Donate with your smartphone

Last Update: 9th March 2020


Purim is a great time for donating money to the many tzedoko appeals and collections.

This year, in addition to using vouchers, AAC are running a trial to allow clients to scan a QR code with their smart phone to make immediate payments from their online account.

A few selected charity collectors this year from different charities will be given a unique QR code – similar to bar codes. This is displayed (printed) on their collecting note and providing you have the app to scan these codes, you simply point at the note and type in how much you want to give. That’s it – all done!

The QRcode automatically provides details of the charity and the collector – which will of course be shown on your statement and available for searching in the history files. All such donations can be easily tracked.

Benefits of scan and donate:

  • Saves you time
  • Much quicker processing of donations compared to vouchers
  • Minimise risk of voucher loss
  • Better tracking of your donations
  • No need to locate the charity name
  • No need to add collectors name into comments

 

Live example of QR code for Ohr Chodosh Shul:

 

To be a part of this trial please email it-support@achisomoch.org and we will send you more details when they are ready.


FAQ

 

1. What is a QRCODE, what does it look like?

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code or the picture above. It is like a bar code except the patterns are small squares inside a bigger square. It was introduced many years ago to make it easier to send a long URL in a letter by post or in a magazine or on a notice board. It saves the reader having to type in a long url to reach a particular web-site. It can also hold additional information (In our case it may include the title of the charity to donate money and the name of the collector)

Yes – although any portable device is fine. Since you are connecting directly to our online system to make an immediate transfer out of the account, you need to be online. It cannot be used from regular computer or a basic mobile phone

2. Do I need a smartphone to take advantage?
Yes – although any portable device is fine

Since you are connecting directly to our online system to make an immediate transfer out of the account, you need to be online. It cannot be used from regular computer or a basic mobile phone.

3. So, I’ve got a smartphone – what do I do next to try it out?

Do you already have a QRCODE reader on your phone? If  you are reading this on a computer you can try it out immediately. Above this FAQ is a sample QRCODE – just call up the app, point your phone over the code. You will then be connected to our online system login and specify how much you want to give. You will notice that it has already got the relevant boxes completed with the name of the charity, name of the Purim Campaign and name of the collection – the is no need to type them in. Total time 15 seconds?

If you don’t have a QRCode reader you will need to download one. This will take a minute or two and needs to be done only once.

4. What is the benefit to a donor?
Benefits of  QuickScan include :

  • Saves you time
  • Much quicker processing of donations compared to vouchers
  • Minimise risk of voucher loss
  • Better tracking of your donations
  • No need to locate the charity name in the drop-down list
  • No need to add collectors name into comments

5. What is the benefit to the charity?

  • immediate notification of the donation
  • Payment within days
  • No paper work to handle
  • Full audit trail
  • Notes passed to the charity – even if its an anonymous donation

6. Is there any other benefit to me?
At some future stage we may offer special incentives for clients who no longer use cheque/voucher books – i.e. donate only online – either using the ONLINE system or QRCodes

7. What is the down side?
Nothing really, you need to have a QRreader on your smartphone and we suspect that some charities may not want to offer QRcode access because they don’t fully understand the concept!

8. Does AAC have any plans for their own App
Yes, in fact we already have our own app with its own QRcode scanner available for Android phone users to make it work even better. If you are on your phone you can download it here.