Truelayer launches Open Banking charity tool

The platform, Donate Direct, was built in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. TrueLayer has also promised to match up to £10,000 worth of donations made through Donate Direct.

TrueLayer has launched a new charity donation platform using open banking to reduce payment fees for good causes. 

The platform, Donate Direct, was built in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. TrueLayer has also promised to match up to £10,000 worth of donations made through Donate Direct. 

Charities are normally charged a monthly subscription fee or take a percentage, often between 1 per cent and 3 percent, of total donations made to initiate payments and use normal banking infrastructure.

By using Payments Initiation, which enables donations to be made directly from online banking without the need for credit or debit cards, donations clear in minutes instead of days, Treulayer says.

Transaction fees are substantially lowered by Payment Initiation, will then be completely covered by the firm.

Shefali Roy (pictured), COO of TrueLayer, speaking with AltFi says the firm was motivated to help charities following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We are doing it for free because this is not the environment where we want to make a buck,” she said.

“When you go into the donate app the Truelayer API will ask you to consent to link your bank account [directly to a charity]. So you link you bank payment directly to the charity account. Nobody takes a cut,” she added.

Women’s Aid, FareShare, End Youth Homelessness, The Wonder Foundation and The Brokerage among charities to sign up to platform which is one of the first to use Payment Initiation to enable fee-free donations.

“By cutting out transaction fees, we’re making sure 100% of donations go to good causes and by using our Payments API for payment initiation using bank to bank rails, donations are fully secure, and clearance is faster,” Roy added.