Case studies

Open banking for charities – Pledjar

02 March 2022

Pledjar describes itself as the charity collection tin of the 21st century, and its premise is simple. It is a digital spare change collection box that drives donations by rounding up small amounts from daily purchases and securely passing them on to charity automatically.

Pledjar logo

As the use of cash continues to decline, it is keeping alive the spirit and principle of giving spare change to charities.

Working with the Charities Aid Foundation, Pledjar supports more than 150 charities worldwide, from big tier one organisations such as Oxfam, Cancer Research UK and Save the Children, through to smaller charities like Sufra based in North-West London and the Lady Fatemah Trust in Buckinghamshire. 

Through open banking technology, Pledjar offers multiple ways for users to donate and can track and show the total of their charitable giving in their own personal ‘jar’.

The most popular service sees the app having visibility of a user’s bank account transactions, rounding up their spends and donating the surplus to their chosen charity. This means for example, for a £15.54 spend at the supermarket, £0.46 could be donated. 

While the micro-donations are small, they soon add up over the course of a few weeks or months and suddenly £20 is donated, which is enough to feed an orphan in a developing country for a month or to buy enough hockey sticks for a team of disabled young people.

Following its launch in 2020,  Pledjar conducted extensive user research wanting to ensure it spoke to the needs and concerns of donors. From this, the organisation has implemented more flexibility, control and transparency for users of its platform and how they choose to donate. These include:  

  • One-off donations – for those who prefer a single transaction or who come across another cause they want to give to.
  • Daily giving – for individuals who don’t want to keep a continuous bank connection open for all transactions, one set amount is added to their jar each day.
  • Limit changes – whether for one-off or for micro-donations, users can set their donation limit for the week.
  • Notifications – users are notified when their donation limits are reached, and are given the option to increase it or keep the figure the same.
  • Optional days to donate – if on Monday the surplus donation was too high, this can be taken out of the donation jar.

Benefits for charities

Pledjar can support most charities. This makes it even easier for users to discover new or lesser-known organisations, and to start donating straightaway.

Another benefit of the Pledjar app, which is FCA-authorised, is that there are no hidden fees. Pledjar simply takes 10% of what was raised using its platform, which crucially doesn’t include the Gift Aid amount – and that’s it. If there are no donations, there are no fees. There are no set-up costs, additional costs to donors or minimum fees for hosting.

Setting up is really quick and simple too. The easy two-step process which is completed via Docusign means signing a fundraising agreement and filling out a form for compliance and due diligence can be done in as little as 10 minutes.

"It’s important charities don’t get left behind and miss out on the millions of pounds of donations in spare change." Mujtaba Jaffer, CEO, Pledjar

Disclaimer: The content of this article is based on a discussion with Pledjar and the Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE) to enable Pledjar to provide details relating its service offering for information purposes only. For more information on the use of our website see: https://www.openbanking.org.uk/terms-conditions/

If you are a third party provider (TPP) and you would like to share your open banking story with us, please email us at marketing@openbanking.org.uk.