Pennies CEO wins prestigious top prize at The Cards & Payments Awards 2018

Alison Hutchinson CBE, CEO of Pennies the digital charity box, was recognised with the coveted Judge’s Award at The Card & Payments Awards, held on 1 February at The Grosvenor House Hotel in London.

Alison has led Pennies from the start, uniting payments partners and retailers to enable millions of customers to ‘feel good’ about giving a few digital pence to charity.

The Chairman of the Judges, Roger Alexanderconcluded Alison deserved the Judge’s prize “for her tireless work to leverage the card payments infrastructure to enable charity donations [and] whose only agenda is to raise thousands of pounds for the UK charity sector.”

Alison Hutchinson CBE said upon winning, “Aside from being hugely surprised and overwhelmed, my firm belief is that this award belongs to the team – not just me. I’m so grateful to the judges for selecting to celebrate Pennies. The payments industry plays such a pivotal role in growing the digital donation movement and so recognition from the industry is so warmly felt and deeply appreciated.

“Pennies is now in its 8th year – and has just surpassed 50M small-change digital donations made to date – half of which were collected in the last two years alone. Together with our partners in payments, retail and charity, Pennies has unlocked around £12M of extra income for over 300 UK registered charities. We’re celebrating a number of milestones and successes ourselves with our ‘Feel-Good February’, and what a wonderful way to kick this off – thank you!”

Pennies is now available in well over 5,000 physical stores (not including where it is available online or in-app) and across 50 retailers; including Domino’s, Zizzi, ASK Italian, Topps Tiles, The Entertainer, Boots Opticians, Travelodge and Virgin Holidays. Currently someone in the UK donates using Pennies every 3 seconds.