Charity offers convenient and secure method for schools to collect cash

The e-Learning Foundation, a charity dedicated to helping deprived children bridge the digital divide, is now offering a PayPoint cash collection service for schools to securely and efficiently collect cash donations.

The new service offered by the e-Leaning Foundation uses the PayPoint network that many families may already use to pay their utility and phone bills.

“We have launched the service in response to feedback from schools,” explained Kevin Pay, Operations Director for the e-Learning Foundation. “As well as obvious safety issues surrounding children carrying money to school for donations, handling cash also generates an extra burden of administration and accounting work in already stretched school offices.”

When a school opts to use Paypoint, the e-Learning Foundation issues an individually barcoded card to parents and carers who want to donate by cash. The cards are accepted at any of 22,000 PayPoints across the UK, including newsagents, local convenience stores, supermarkets and garages.  Most open long hours and many are open seven days a week.

The money is paid into the school bank account along with funds gathered using other donation methods. Schools receive regular report updates on the number and value of donations made via the e-Learning Foundation’s web portal.

As with all other forms of donations made through the e-Learning Foundation’s DMS system, PayPoint donations attract Gift Aid wherever a donor has completed a Gift Aid declaration.

To find out more about the e-Learning Foundation’s PayPoint cash collection and DMS service, please visit stand M40 at BETT 2010.

Ends…

Enquiries:
PayPoint Press Office    
01707 600356     
peterbrooker@paypoint.co.uk    

Jan Howells
e-Learning Foundation
+44 (0) 1932 796036
Mobile 0771 388 3773
jan@e-learningfoundation.co.uk

Tom Nutt      
The Communication Group
020 7630 1411
paypoint@thecommunicationgroup.co.uk

NOTES TO EDITORS

About the e-Learning Foundation
The e-Learning Foundation was launched in 2001, to ensure that every schoolchild in the UK should have access to learning technologies when and where they want to learn, and especially at home.

The Foundation, a registered charity, aims to bridge the digital divide and ensure that all children, irrespective of their background, can have the same access to technology for learning as their better off peers.

The Foundation is funded through the public, private and third sector in the form of Government grants, commercial sponsorship, grants and donations.
www.e-learningfoundation.com

About PayPoint
PayPoint is the leading cash and internet payments company in the UK, with operations also in Ireland and Romania. It handles nearly £9 billion from over 540 million transactions annually for more than 6,000 clients and merchants. The company operates several businesses:

• The PayPoint branded retail network numbers over 22,000 terminals located in local shops (including Co-op, Spar, McColls, Costcutter, Sainsburys Local, One Stop, Londis and thousands of independents) in all parts of the UK and Ireland. Our terminals process gas and electricity meter prepayments, cash bill payments, mobile phone top-ups, transport tickets, BBC TV licences and a wide variety of other payment types for most leading utilities, telecommunications suppliers and many consumer service companies;

• An ATM network which has over 2,300 ‘LINK’ branded machines across the UK, typically in convenience stores;

• PayPoint.net, an internet payment service provider, delivers secure online credit and debit card payments for over 5,000 web merchants, linking into all major UK acquiring banks;

• Pay Store SRL, trading as PayPoint Romania, a mobile top-up operator with over 5,700 outlets equipped with electronic terminals. A bill payment service has been added to increase the breadth of PayPoint’s offering in Romania, emulating the UK branded retail network; and

• Collect+, a joint venture with Home Delivery Network Limited, provides a parcel collection and drop off service at our retailers.

PayPoint floated on the London Stock Exchange in September 2004 and the company’s market capitalisation at 13 August 2009 was £362 million.