The Salvation Army is adding NFC chips to all 25,000 of its iconic Red Kettles for its Christmas 2019 fundraising campaign, enabling shoppers to simply tap their Apple or Android NFC phone to make a donation to the charity.

The Salvation Army is providing fundraisers across the USA with NFC tags and stickers printed with a QR code and the Apple Pay and Google Pay logos that they then attach to their Red Kettles.

Tapping the tag or scanning the code automatically opens a custom Salvation Army donation page on the shoppers’ mobile phone. They can then select the amount they would like to donate and use Apple Pay or Google Pay to complete their payment.

‘Kettle Pay’ donations are then automatically distributed to the donator’s local Salvation Army unit “based on the donor’s billing ZIP code” and an email receipt is sent directly to their phone.

A video produced by The Salvation Army shows how Kettle Pay works:

The Red Kettle Campaign is now in its 129th year and “is one of the oldest and largest charitable campaigns in the world,” the Salvation Army says.

“Every year, the campaign raises millions of dollars to provide toys for kids at Christmas, clothes and shelter for the homeless, food for the hungry, after-school programmes for kids, and other services to America’s most vulnerable populations year round.”

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