Pennies, the award-winning fintech charity which enables micro-donations to charity, successfully held its first ever Micro-Donation Day on Monday, 26 August 2024 which, in addition to boosting awareness of the micro-donation movement, raised £30,000 for charities including Cancer Research UK, MND Association and Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity - thanks to more than 130,000 individual donations.

Pennies CEO, Alison Hutchinson CBE, said: “We’re thrilled that Pennies partners and customers have rallied together for the first ever Micro-Donation Day, and to be celebrating such a brilliant sum raised in a single day. Micro-Donation Day set out to raise awareness of our mission to grow micro-donations for charities and to show the real-world impact many small contributions can have, creating a powerful force for good that raises much needed funds for deserving charities. We want to say a big thank you to our merchant partners and their customers - together we’ve helped highlight what a powerful force for good micro-donations are.”

Micro-donations can be made on card payment terminals in-store and at the checkout online or in-app, when shopping with participating Pennies partners across retail, hospitality, leisure and the service sector. Since 2010, millions of people have joined the micro-donation movement. To date, Pennies has enabled over 221 million micro-donations and raised over £53 million for more than 1,000 charities.

This year, select Pennies partners supported the initiative with activities and promotions in stores, engaging social media campaigns, and some even ran match-funding campaigns to maximise the impact of every contribution. Participating partners for Micro-Donation Day 2024 included Adnams, Barracudas, Booths, Cotswold Outdoor, Currys, Domino’s, Hendy Group, Holland & Barrett, Millbrook Garden Centres, MFG (Motor Fuel Group), Poundland, Runners Need, Snow+Rock, The Entertainer, The Restaurant Group, Toolstation and Well Pharmacy. 

Partners continued to raise awareness of Micro-Donation Day, and the collective impact of small change donations, all week long - from 26th August to 1st September. Across the week, more than 1 million individual donations were made across all Pennies partners.

Pennies has partnered with more than 150 high street brands to offer their customers the option to make a micro-donation when they pay for their purchases. Pennies also collaborates with over 30 top tier payments and technology partners, who integrate micro-donations into their product offerings, including Ingenico, Shopify, Verifone and Worldpay.