NatWest helps Captain Tom Foundation raise donations

NatWest’s open banking powered Payit service is now an option for those wishing to donate to the Captain Tom Foundation, the charity set up by Captain Sir Tom Moore and his family to support worthy causes following the vast national support the veteran received throughout the course of 2020 during his lockdown walks. NatWest will waive all fees to ensure 100% of donations go directly to the charity’s chosen benefactors.

Payit uses the open banking infrastructure to allow customers of major UK banks to make a donation to the Foundation. Donors select the Payit button on the Captain Tom Foundation’s donate page, and then select the bank they wish to pay from. The customer is then automatically redirected to their bank’s mobile or online banking to complete the payment.

NatWest was the first UK bank to allow customers to pay merchants in this way; the service is known as a Payment Initiation Service Provider (PISP) and provides a faster, safer payment experience which doesn’t require the customer to enter credit or debit card details.

Payit has now processed £15m of transactions in the five months since its launch in June, prior to today’s agreement with The Captain Tom Foundation. NatWest’s use of this service across its brands has seen it become the top PISP in the UK by volume of transactions.

Paul Thwaite, CEO, Commercial Banking at NatWest said: ‘We are honoured to be partnering with the Captain Tom Foundation to provide payment technology that will allow the Foundation to collect donations simply and securely. We’re pleased to be waiving all fees, ensuring that 100% of donations go to the Foundation’s multiple worthy causes across the UK.’

‘We are delighted that over 100,000 customers have now chosen Payit by NatWest to make a payment with our other partners, showing a significant appetite from both businesses and customers for the ease and simplicity that open banking can clearly offer. As the leading bank in this space, we’re looking forward to working with many more businesses to offer this innovative and market leading feature to their customers.’
Gemma Huddleston, The Captain Tom Foundation said:

“The Captain Tom Foundation have been delighted to work with NatWest to implement their Payit solution. We utilise Payit on our foundation website in order to enable us to collect donations from the general public and organisations in a fast, simple and secure way.”

The Foundation joins the roster of existing businesses that currently offer Payit as a payments option to its customers, including Vanquis Bank, FreeAgent and the MS Society. The bank is poised to announce a raft of new merchants in the coming weeks, as well as new functionality that will allow merchants to send payments to customers using the service, making it an attractive option for businesses to provide refunds and send payments to customers.