How does Swiftaid add Gift Aid to my contactless donations?

Contactless donations are anonymous with no option to tick a box to add Gift Aid, so how does it work?

Swiftaid uses different donor identifiers to match donors to donations. For example with contactless, the identifier we use is a reference that is linked to your payment card. This reference appears within the card transaction and is unique to your payment card. So when you tap on a contactless terminal, the terminal provider will check with Swiftaid to see if this identifier is registered with Swiftaid. If a match is successful, Swiftaid will create a Gift Aid declaration and Gift Aid will be claimed.

This reference is called a ‘Payment Account Reference’ which is non-sensitive payment data and can not be used to make or take payments.