With this year's poppy campaign underway in Guelph, a new electronic tap donation box has been set up at the Costco on Elmira Road South to allow for a quick donation using a debit or credit card.
The box, which offers donors the option to donate $2, $5 or $10, is the first and only box of its type in Guelph.
"People have been really generous, they really have been, rather than putting in toonies or loonies it's $5 bills, $10 bills it's $20 bills," said David Thompson, remembrance and poppy chair with the Guelph Royal Canadian Legion. "We really do appreciate the support."
Thompson said as the world transitions into a cash-less society this electronic donation box will give those who don't carry cash the option to still donate to the poppy campaign.
"The best thing I can say is it is very efficient and very quick, but still does not interfere with getting poppies," said Thompson. "It seems to me to be the most perhaps efficient way we have of doing this particular program."
As an added bonus, the funds collected electronically can be tallied much quicker than counting the cash, a process that can sometimes take days at a time.
Thompson said the main benefits of the electronic donation box are the elimination of the need to make change, the sanitary component and the ease of allowing people to transfer in an exact pre-determined amount.
The pandemic altered the traditional approach to last year's poppy campaign which saw 250 of these electronic donation boxes set up in various cities across Canada, as well as unmanned poppy boxes at select locations.
This year that number has been increased to 1,000 electronic boxes spread across Canada with the hopes to increase that number year-over-year.
"This is a combined project between the HSBC bank and dominion command, and the bank is actually sponsoring the purchase of the boxes for the first 250 made," said Thompson. "They ran it last year as a trial project to see what the reaction of people would be and how efficient the machines would be."
While the boxes are still new, Thompson said in the two hours he spent on Wednesday with the poppy campaign he had roughly 70 people come by and a handful of them opted to use the electronic donation method.
The future of the boxes remains unknown, however, Thompson said he hopes the electronic boxes distribution next year increases to allow for multiple types of these donation systems to be spread across Guelph.
